Week 2 (July 18-19th)

Welcome back everyone, Jim here again to give you all a run down of all the competition that took place at week 2 of the osu! Summer League. We had a bit of clutter this week due to some cleaning our brackets needed. Several of our players were given byes due to a few drop outs and scheduling got a bit odd to handle. It was a pretty huge headache for our officer board so if you see osuuci dot com around be sure to throw him a thanks for getting it all sorted out!

Now onto more exciting matters, the performances we had this week on stream definitely did not disappoint. This week’s map pool had some of osu’s most iconic maps in the no mod pool such as Kakushigoto, one of jonathanlfj’s classics, as well as one of the more recent map of Kawaiwkyik’s Miiro, both of which made their way as picks on stream quite frequently. Double time had featured some of Tillerino’s favorites with PP heavy picks such as lull~ Soshite Bokura Wa~, which quite a few players had opted for based on the large amounts of practice they had with the map.

Our entrants this week had seemed to shy away from the Hard Rock picks after the rough time many had with the mod last week. With the exception of the occasional pick on Mind In Motion, Hard Rock went relatively untouched by most of our players. This week’s kicker however was the Hidden category. While smooth and relatively easy to read maps were placed into the Hidden pool, the absence of the approach circles was enough to completely destroy the sense of reading in many of those daring enough to pick from the Hidden pool.

Most notably, the triangles at the end of No Brand Girls was notorious for failing out quite a few players this week. The mod had even been able to trip up the tournament favorite to win, Natalia, on Frostmourne’s Up All Night, giving him his first dropped game of the tourney to saltstick. While he still managed to win the match decisively in a 2-1 victory, it still went on to show that Hidden is definitely not a mod to be underestimated. Despite being the lowest PP rewarding mod, it showed that it had the potential to be just as difficult as the other two this week.

For this week’s tiebreaker we had a monster of a map, Goldenwolf’s crowning achievement, Kanjou No Matenrou ~ World’s End. The 7 minute map challenged player’s consistency, stamina and especially their streaming ability. Coming in at 5.6 stars, this map was not to be taken lightly, but our players were more than prepared and up for the challenge. Among the higher ranked players competing in the tournament, the top play for most was of course Daidai Genome, but coming in at a close second was World’s End. Many players were quite familiar with the map and were able to pull out S ranks on it, and were able to showcase their experience on stream.

Many of our matches got heartbreakingly close, with players masterfully navigating the streams and strongly holding combo throughout the map. At the end of the day however, it was consistency that proved to be the deciding factor. With 7 minutes to work with, early leads and breaks can be made up for and thrown and it all comes down to who’s got the stabler hands. Many of the games on stream ended up in huge comebacks and even bigger throws, concluding each of our matches with a well earned and deserved victory.

That’ll be it for week 2, be sure to check back often for all the updates on everything OSL. Big shout out to Huion for helping us out with this tournament and helping us out with prizing for you guys. And with that I’ll see you guys next week!

Schedule

Sorry for the wait everyone! Challonge is not being very friendly with us, and when we remove players, it doesn't reset matches and find games for people. For small tournaments that go on in a day, this is probably fine, but for us it's a hassle to deal with. We went through a lot of trouble remaking brackets and communicating with people to try to fit good times for you all. Good luck!