There is no stopping the Vainglory competitive scene at this point. Tournament play is nearly worldwide and getting more competitive by the match. There were some big steps forward this week, so be glad you’re along for the ride.

VGL NA and EU

The second qualifying round of the winter season is almost complete after another spectacular weekend of matches. If you haven’t been watching these games, you done cheated yourself. All replays can be found on Twitch, so check them out at your leisure and get ready for the semifinals and finals next week. In NA; GankStars Sirius, Alliance, Liberation X and Halcyon Hammers Velocity have all advanced. Over in EU, Team Secret, RebirthofEmpire, G2 Kinguin and SK Prometheus will be battling it out in the semifinals.

Tesseract Qualifier (SEA)

The SEA Tesseract tournament continued this weekend, leaving only four teams for the finals next week. The crazy part is that three of those teams belong to Infamous. Specter, Legion and Stigma were all seeded first in their individual brackets, so chances are good one of them may be heading to the next VIPL. However, Hunters Ace rose to the top of Taka Region as the third seed, beating first seed, Revivial eSports, in the quarterfinals. As a correction from last week, this tournament is being streamed on Mobcrush.

Bush Glitch Exploit

Be warned brave heroes, another a pesky glitch with unfair potential has been discovered in the past week or so. Known as the bush glitch, this particular jungle bush makes heroes that enter invisible to their opponent and therefore impossible to attack. As an example, this can be abused for safe recalls back to base when a team fight goes poorly. I’m not telling you this so you can use it, only a jerk would take advantage of something like that. I’m telling you so if you play against someone who does, you know they’re a jerk.

Live Championship at Red Bull eSports Studio

After much confusion as to the reported change of venue, it was finally announced on Friday that the Winter Season Live Championship for NA will be taking place at the Red Bull eSports Studio in Santa Monica, CA. This is incredibly exciting for Vainglory as it marks another huge milestone in the meteoric rise of the professional scene.

Gadianton Branches Out

Something worth pointing out about the Red Bull article we just linked is the author. Special congratulations go out to our own Gadianton (a.k.a. Jonathan) as he has begun his work as a guest writer for Red Bull eSports. Gad is helping Red Bull branch out to cover the Vainglory professional scene and is already doing a bang up job of it. But if they ever pay him enough to draw him away from Broken Myth, I’ll burn that mother down.

Live Championship Age Restriction for NA

It came out on Twitter on Sunday that the Winter Season Live Championship for North America will have to impose an age restriction of 15 years old for players and fans who would like to attend. While I’m sure this will affect many people who planned on attending, this is a huge blow to players like DNZio of Halcyon Hammers and Al3x of Rage Pingers as they have participated on their teams for the entirety of the season only to be excluded from playing for the title. It appears this rule comes as a result of the Red Bull venue for the championship. Unfortunately, obstacles like this can be part of the growing pains with professional competition as certain standards have to be put in place to protect the players. A sympathetic fist bump goes out to those that this affects. We’ll continue to silently hope that Red Bull and SEMC figure out a way for every talented player to attend.

UPDATE #1: PlayOffBeard is looking into this! Read more here.

UPDATE #2: A solution has been created! Details here.

Big Roster Change

Following VON Menace’s elimination from the 2nd VGL qualifier, VONC took to Twitter to announce his departure from the team. Within moments, a few big guilds were already in communication with the talented player and a short time later his membership in Halcyon Hammers was made official. So far, it’s only known that VONC will team up with XenoTek, which should already be intimidating to other teams.

Night Shadow Taka

Sneaky backstabbers rejoice, a limited Taka skin has been announced! Update 1.15 will see Night Shadow Taka in all his Blade Runner laser sword glory. I look forward to seeing what sort of box he uses and how flashy that X-Retsu will be when you laser your way through a Kestrel that’s still struggling to land those more difficult Glimmershots. I say “you,” because in that scenario I’m the Kestrel.

I will comfortably hedge my bets that SEMC drops some more exciting news for update 1.15 during this week’s dev stream. We also have the semifinals and finals for the VGL qualifiers next weekend and that’ll fantastic too. Until then, stay classy all you stubborn Breaking Point Kruls and Clockwork Phinn Pulls.