The Overwatch World Cup kicked off today in Shanghai with the beginning of the group stage offering few surprises.

Overwatch World Cup: France and China 4-0

Clear favorites going in, Team China and France ended the day 4-0 and leaders of their groups. China played against Romania in the opening series and was in complete control. They only conceded the first points on Hollywood and Horizon Lunar Colony to Romania.

Noteworthy about this series was the Genji play of Ou “Eileen” Yiliang. The Romanians could not find a way to stop him from destroying their backline. Then again, the Romanians couldn’t find a way to stop any of China’s players from jumping into their backlines. China’s target focusing was awesome to watch with how they would collapse on a single target like a pack of wolves. Eileen’s Genji was a wolf whose fangs were sharpest today.

While China rolled their opponents Team France struggled against Team Argentina. This was mainly due to the Tracer play of Argentina’s Nicolas “Klaus” Ferrari. Klaus was a constant presence in the French backline, getting frags off their supports. Klaus was even able to hold his own, and sometimes beat, Terence “So0n” Tarlier, one of the best Tracer players in the tournament, in 1v1 duels.

Unfortunately for Klaus and Argentina his small victories against So0n and the supports were not enough to beat France. Argentina as a whole wasn’t able to overcome the combined might of Dylan “aKm” Bignet and Nicolas “NiCOgdh” Moret’s play on Soldier 76, D.Va and Genji.

Yet, even though Argentina come away from this series pointless, they have shown teams that Argentina is not to be taken lightly. Just like Team Thailand did in their showing against Denmark.

Overwatch world cup: Thailand comes back

Team Thailand also played today against Team Denmark and their match was a close one.

Thailand went down 0-2 early to Denmark due to the stellar play of Mads “Fischer” Jehg on Soldier 76.

Denmark as a whole did a fantastic job of shutting down early Pongphop “Mickie” Rattanasangchod’s D.Va. Whenever Mickie would dive in on Fischer team Denmark would immediately collapse on him and take him out. In fact, the strategy for Denmark throughout the first two maps, King’s Row and Lijiang Tower, centered around protecting Fischer so that he could act as their hyper carry.

This trend continued until the second attacking phase on Horizon when Thailand finally had enough of Fischer on the high ground and sent Mickie as D.Va and “Teetawatv3” as Winston to focus him. It was this move in addition to a Sombra switch by Ubon “oPuTo” Dara that won Thailand the last two games of the series.

oPuTo’s switch to Sombra from Genji on Horizon helped Thailand win that map and the following one because Sombra’s EMP is powerful. Denmark couldn’t find a way of stopping oPuTo from building his ultimate or stopping him from ulting their whole team.

Because of the effectiveness of Sombra’s ultimate and how easy it is to charge we expect to see her picked more often as the tournament progresses. We especially expect to see oPuTo on Sombra in their match tomorrow against France.

Overwatch World cup: Thailand v.s. France

Thailand’s next opponent is France and it should prove to be a close match. Thailand showed in their match that even down 0-2 that they’ve got the grit needed to battle back. While France showed in their match against Argentina that they can be challenged. We believe that if Thailand is to beat France tomorrow oPuTo has to have a big game as Sombra.

Day two of the Overwatch World Cup can be watched live on Twitch.

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