Games Academy have won the online MLG Columbus Last Chance North America pre-qualifier, defeating Winterfox 2-1 (16-4 on de_mirage, 12-16 on de_dust2, and 16-10 on de_cbble) and have thus qualified for the MLG Columbus Main Qualifier in February.

The Last Chance North America pre-qualifier for the MLG Columbus Main Qualifier was hosted by CEVO and ran throughout this weekend as a single elimination, best-of-three bracket featuring eight teams from the Americas region.

The quarter-finals of the Last Chance pre-qualifier had generally predictable results, with the newly formed NRG and TSM teams falling to OpTiC Gaming and Winterfox respectively whereas Games Academy surprisingly lost a map to Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares's Torqued mix but prevailed.



boltz and the rest of Games Academy to attend the MLG Columbus Main Qualifier

In the semifinals, Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles and crew of Games Academy defeated the highest seed SPLYCE fairly confidently with a 2-0 scoreline whereas David "⁠Xp3⁠" Garrido and his men of Winterfox shocked OpTiC (yet again considered heavy favourites in light of their being the highest ranked team at the tournament) in a 2-1 takedown that saw Todd "⁠anger⁠" Williams thrive.

The grand finals were also not as one sided as some may have thought although de_mirage was a complete whitewash for Games Academy as the Brazilian team took the first map 16-4 after a dominant 14-1 first half.

de_dust2 was where Winterfox rallied due to a strong CT side, winning the map 16-12, which sent the series to the final map of Cobblestone. In the end, Games Academy proved to be the stronger team and took the map 16-10, thereby winning the series 2-1 and securing qualification to the MLG Columbus Main Qualifier.

MLG Columbus 2016 Last Chance NA pre-qualifier Best of 3 Games Academy Matchpage 2 1 Winterfox 16 Mirage 4 12 Dust2 16 16 Cobblestone 10

Games Academy K - D +/- ADR Rating 1.0 João 'felps' Vasconcellosfelps 73 - 51 +22 - 1.36 Ricardo 'boltz' Prassboltz 57 - 48 +9 - 1.10 Gustavo 'SHOOWTiME' GonçalvesSHOOWTiME 59 - 48 +11 - 1.09 Lucas 'LUCAS1' TelesLUCAS1 52 - 49 +3 - 1.06 Henrique 'HEN1' TelesHEN1 45 - 39 +6 - 0.97 Winterfox K - D +/- ADR Rating 1.0 Derek 'desi' Branchendesi 54 - 58 -4 - 1.00 David 'Xp3' GarridoXp3 48 - 55 -7 - 0.91 Todd 'anger' Williamsanger 46 - 58 -12 - 0.85 Alexander 'LeX' DeilyLeX 44 - 56 -12 - 0.82 Kyle 'flowsicK' MendezflowsicK 42 - 59 -17 - 0.76

Therefore, the list of participants for the offline qualifier for the MLG Columbus major, on February 26-28, currently looks as follows:

Cloud9 Cloud9 CLG CLG mousesports mousesports ex-Titan ex-Titan dignitas dignitas FlipSid3 Tactics FlipSid3 Tactics Team Liquid Team Liquid Vexed Gaming Vexed Gaming Enemy Enemy Gambit Gaming Gambit Gaming Games Academy Games Academy

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter