Starting off the matches happening on Friday this week, we saw a big upset in the Overwatch League: The Atlanta Reign won 3-1 over the New York Excelsior.
David versus Goliath
Atlanta was heavily favored to lose this match due to their recent struggles in losing Daniel “dafran” Francesca. Not only that, but their new acquisition Andrej “babybay” Francisty stumbled a bit on his start and their roster was being juggled fairly randomly. Along with fellow mid-table team Toronto Defiant, they only won their match against the Washington Justice this stage.
On the New York side, there was no sign of issues. In stage two, they started out the first two weeks without losing a single map, only drawing once against the Shanghai Dragons. It wasn’t until they faced the Philadelphia Fusion that they lost a map, and even then they won the match 3-1. Everyone was playing well, recovering off of their poor stage one playoff performance. That made this loss all the more surprising, ending the Excelsior’s winning streak at twelve regular season games.
Korean tank duo reunited
The key players to this win for the Atlanta Reign were the tank line of Hyun-jun “Pokpo” Park and Dong-hyeong “DACO” Seo. With their new acquisition Nathan “frd” Goebel getting a lot of stage time recently, Daco was benched for unknown reasons. But the Reign decided to put them back together as they were used to, and it showed in this match. Surprisingly, the Excelsior seemed to be just worse at the compositions that Atlanta were running, specifically that three-tank three-support composition. For New York Excelsior fans, this must be scary — a random loss to what seemed to be an easy opponent. But fans of the Excelsior must be happy they can learn from this now rather than in the playoffs.
With their streak ended, New York faces Atlanta again after the Dallas home games. This rematch will be feisty.
