Welcome to the OWL Stage 1 Playoffs Day 1 Recap! These matches were ones you did not want to miss. Teams went head to head battling for a spot in the semi-finals matches, vying for the $200,000 first place prize. From unexpected results to a clean sweep, here’s what happened in the first day of the Stage 1 Playoffs.

Missed the action? Be sure to catch our Top 5 plays from the first day of the Stage 1 Playoffs right here!

Seoul Dynasty versus New York Excelsior

Coming into this match, fans (and even our own writers) thought they had it all figured out. With NYXL having a dominant and undefeated first stage coming into the playoffs, most viewers believed that they would be able to take the win quite easily over the Dynasty. Seoul, of course, had struggled mightily recently. Well, the complete opposite happened. The Seoul Dynasty shocked the viewers as they took down the New York Excelsior. They did so dominantly, taking the win with a final score of 3-1.

An Upset for the Ages

New York didn’t look themselves in this match. They looked uncoordinated and disorganised, and main tank Mano was out of place often. The Excelsior did take a win on Volskaya Industries, which is where they managed to bring themselves back slightly during that game.

Unfortunately, it took them 6 points to win the map, with the final score of Volskaya ending as 5-6. Flex tank MekO also landed a quadruple kill as D.va with his Self-Destruct, with the help of Nenne’s Graviton Surge. This allowed the Excelsior to take the point and move onto Point B, where they would eventually take the match and the win on Volskaya. The fans were hoping to see a New York Excelsior versus Vancouver Titans Grand Final, but sadly the match won’t be taking place this stage. New York now has to head back to the drawing board and see what went wrong.

Seoul's got Soul

Seoul came to play, and they played better than they have this entire season so far. This game was by far the best showing from almost every single played on the Dynasty. From flex player Michelle dominating the game as Sombra to then entire team playing mind games with the NYXL on the point, Dynasty brought their A-game. Michelle was definitely a highlight during this game, though. Michelle played excellently, but the standout moments were on Hollywood and Rialto.

During Seoul’s attack on Hollywood, Michelle noticed that flex support for the NYXL, JJonak, had his ultimate ready as Zenyatta to save his teamates that were stuck in the NYXL Graviton Surge. To stop this, Michelle manually hacked JJonak with his ability and stopped the flex support from saving his team. This allowed Michelle and the Dynasty to take down the Excelsior and capture the second point. The second example was when Michelle was invisible during the final point of Rialto on NYXL’s attack. DPS player Nenne had noticed that Michelle went invisible, so he dropped his Graviton Surge to try and catch him.

Unfortunately, Michelle had already escaped and gone through a different archway to get back to his team, thereby wasting Nenne's Graviton Surge. The Seoul Dynasty will now be facing off against the Vancouver Titans in the first semi-finals match on Saturday.

Almost no one saw this coming. Even though we saw NYXL lose out in the Stage 1 Playoffs, viewers got one of the most phenomenal upsets of Stage 1.

Boston Uprising versus Vancouver Titans

This wasn’t a very hard one to predict. The Vancouver Titans came first overall in Stage 1, beating NYXL by a +2 map differential since both teams had a 7-0 match record. Unfortunately for Boston, the Titans came well prepared for everything the Uprising had prepared for them. With a clean sweep, the Vancouver Titans took the victory over the Boston Uprising and progressed onto the semi-finals with a final match score of 3-0.

Boston Played Well Despite the Loss

Boston lost, but there were some signs of life during their game against the Titans. As Boston attacked the point on Kings Row, flex tank NotE dropped his Self-Destruct as D.va after DPS teammate Colourhex used his Graviton Surge to trap the members of Vancouver. Main tank Fusions then charged through the Surge to knock down any shields that the Titans had up, and NotE’s bomb took down two players.

This well-executed play left the Titans them without their Lucio and their Brigitte. It was all Uprising from then as they took the point once they’d forced Vancouver back, and they began to sail through the streets of Kings Row towards the second point. Boston also gave the Titans a bit of a surprise on Ilios Lighthouse, as they diverted away from the usual 3-3 composition and ran a Junkrat, Hammond, Pharah, Sombra, Mercy and Ana. Although they lost the map, DPS player Blasé got a triple kill as Junkrat to keep the Titans at bay until the Uprising were forced to switch back to 3-3.

Remember the Titans, 'cause you're going to see a lot of them

It was business as usual for the Vancouver Titans as they continue their regular season winning streak coming into the playoffs. While we didn't see any of JJANU and Bumper’s devastating combos as D.va and Reinhardt to win fights, Vancouver simply outplayed the Uprising. Vancouver picked up on Boston’s mistakes and capitalized on them, which allowed them to win several team fights and aided them in winning the three maps of the series. Main tank Bumper even decided to go a little wild during their defence on Kings Row.

As the Titans chased the Uprising back to their spawn, Bumper noticed that Colourhex was lacking his defence barrier as Zarya, so Bumper took advantage of the cooldown. He dropped his Earthshatter as he chased Boston through the chokepoint, knocking down several members of the team and forcing them to regroup for a desperate final attack to see if they could gain more ground. Unfortunately for the Uprising, Vancouver was ready for them and through effective communication and well-executed teamwork, they managed to hold the Uprising off and stopped them from claiming the second point.

Missed the action? Be sure to catch our Top 5 plays from the first day of the Stage 1 Playoffs right here!