News

Nihilum Are the Archon Team League Champions! 150,000$ for Lifecoach, Thijs and RDU!

Fri 11th Sep 2015 - 1:00am : Hearthstone

Playing the very maximum possible games in the entirety of the ATLC, both in phase 2, qualifying to the live finals from the penultimate spot in groups, then in the live finals playing all possible matches again due to the penultimate spot in seeding matches, Nihilum has won the entire Archon Team League!

An incredible achievement, especially due to the fact that the grand finals started at 4 am EU time and since RDU couldn’t make it to Texas and had to play from home. A huge congratulations to Lifecoach, Thijs and RDU on their 1st place and a well deserved 150,000$!

The ATLC has been an amazing tournament, across the group stages, satellite phase and the live finals, bringing some of the most exciting matches ever seen and showing how viable the team tournament format is. Hopefully it’ll be even bigger and better next year!

Here is the grand finals match, unfortunately a little truncated due to the stream cut outs, so apologies for the autoplay on the VoDs. The first one is of the full day and only has the first game of the grand finals, starting at 9h:07mins.

Then we have the second game, also getting its own VoD:

And the final part of the finale:

The final day of th ATLC is here and it will be a LONG one. Yesterday Nihilum won against Tempo Storm and then the tie breaker match vs. Value Town was interrupted by an internet outage, and right in the middle of game 4 at a 1-2 deficit. Unfortunately for us, that game was firmly in Lifecoaches hands and there was very little chance Trump could pull it back, but the rule state that if thre isn't 100% lethal on board a rematch must be played. So let's hope this doesn't turn out to be the critical match and Nihilum loses because of it. 

Even if that happens, however, it won't be the final match for Nihilum, but would put us in roughly the same position as we were after the group stages, having to climb back up to from the bottom, and we all know how that ended! So whatever happens in the continuation of the tie breaker match at 19:00 CET there will still be matches to play. After the rematch it's the quarterfinals, then semis and then it's the grand final where Cloud9 await the winners of the previous 2 matches. 

Yet another incredibly close match on day 1, unfortunately RDU's Mech Shaman just didn't live up to the ATLC's high standards and Value town took the match 6-5, with the Shaman failing to get a win at 5-4 for Nihilum. A cruicial cracke in the very final game rolled the lowest and cost RDU the win. So we're definitely not going directly into the grand finals, but considering how we got to the live finals, that's probably for the better. 

Matches continue tomorrow and even a 0-2 score doesn't mean a team is out. The match will be against Tempo Storm. 

The time has finally come and we're at the end of the line of the ATLC with the Live Finals starting today! It's been a hell of a trip to get here for Nihilum, participating in every single round of the event so far, including the main round robin group stage, the redemption stage and the satellite stage. But the team never gave up, even when they were bumped from an almost certain 1st-2nd place finish in the group stage down to the penultimate spot, Lifecoach, Thijs, RDU and a part-time Lothar persevered, bringing us to the Live finals. You can check out RDU's recent review of the entire road so far, including all the Nihilum match videos right here.

It's going to be three days of crazy action in Texas with the 4 top teams going through a rigorous process to get to the very top and that 150,000$ grand prize. Most players have already arrived, but our very own RDU might miss the in-person fun as he had some visa trouble, but even if he doesn't make it he'll be able to participate online. 

All three days will have fun events as well as the sure to be incredible matches themselves and the very first match starts at 19:15, with Cloud9 taking on Tempo Storm and after that it's Nihilum time as we face off against Value town at 21:45 CET. Here's the full info for the entire Life finals, in gigantic image form:

Starym

Starym

Starym

Your Comments

Please register or login to post comments