Good Morning, Vietnam: CyzoneVN are the World Cup's early risers

Vietnam have become the first country to finalise their World Cup team, having chosen to send the pre-existing CyzoneVN roster to represent them.

Their committee held a tryout open to teams with a Skill Rating of at least 3500 for each member, with 4 invited teams seeded directly into the second stage of the tryouts. The format was a single elimination bracket was with best-of-three matches and a best-of-five final.

Aside from CyzoneVN, the invited teams were: The Beginner, GameHome, and Keep Going Bois. All the matches in the tryouts were pretty one-sided, with 2-0s across the board bar one game, and the invited teams holding their top 4 position. CyzoneVN had a very strong showing as well, beating Keep Going Bois convincingly in a 3-0 finale. You can watch the tryout finals here, just that it's in Vietnamese. CyzoneVN proved once again that they are the top team of Vietnam.

A look at CyzoneVN

Previously known as VReborn, they received second place in the SEA Invitationals, and more recently were crowned champions of the Overwatch SEA Tournament. The team has been together for roughly 8 months with minor roster changes that kept the the team core intact. They have shown great dominance in tournaments they participated, and are currently one of the best South-East Asian (SEA) teams, with a possibility of them competing on the same level of some of the Pacific Championship teams. It remains to be seen whether they could contest with FireBall as they have yet to play against each other. Nevertheless, that does not discredit the disparity in level they have consistently shown with the rest of the SEA teams. CyzoneVN has also exhibited great flexibility in team compositions and plays them better than their counterparts, with preference on dive compositions and running Sombra on Assault maps.

What's in store for Team Vietnam this year

Last year, Team Vietnam was in a group alongside Taiwan and Indonesia, and managed a second place with a team containing a few members of CyzoneVN. This year, they are in Group D, facing against Finland, Spain, and Japan. Team Vietnam has had limited experience playing on an international level compared to the Finnish and Spanish players. It would be interesting to see how they fare against these strong opponents in their group, and they could put up a strong fight if they maintain the form that they've showcased in the Overwatch SEA Tournament.

While we can't tell for certain how the game would have evolved by the time World Cup 2017 begins, they currently do fare well in the dive-oriented meta with strong DPS players in MreA and Mrhip who both have a deep hero pool that can prove advantageous. Even though Team Vietnam are unlikely to make it out of the group stages, the World Cup would be a great platform for them to gain experience and show what one of the top teams in SEA has in store for the world.

Team Vietnam, represented by players of CyzoneVN is as follows:

Hai “MreA” Nguyen Ngoc (DPS)

Hai Nguyen Ngoc (DPS) Khoa ”KJerry” Dam Anh (Tank)

Khoa Dam Anh (Tank) Tu ”Funky” Nguyen Dac (Support)

Tu Nguyen Dac (Support) Hieu ”Mrhip” Nguyen Manh (DPS)

Hieu Nguyen Manh (DPS) Toan ”Maverick” Mai Trong (Tank)

Toan Mai Trong (Tank) Son ”Simple” Vuong Vu Thien (Support)

Special thanks to my co-author, sandshrewz.