Singapore’s eSports culture is growing steadily – and fast! DotA 2, League of Legends, FIFA Online, and most prominently Street Fighter (for which the country sports prodigy World Champion Xian Ho) have enthusiasts increasing their numbers every year. Of course, First-Person Shooter couldn’t be left behind, and which better game than the community’s (and our) sweetheart: Overwatch!

The Overwatch Singapore Tournament summoned all Singaporean FPS teams for their first battle of 2017, and quite an attrition war it was: the qualifiers spanned from February to mid-March, with two weeks of rest before closing in April with Best of 5 and 7 final matches.

While last year, GameStart Asia hosted the Overwatch Champions tournament with SGD 3000 at stake, this time Logitech G, Zenway Productions, Gam3.Asia and Samsung teamed up to raise the ante to 3 grand just for the first place, with a total prize pool of SGD 5100! Not to mention the usual gaming gear, notably Samsung monitors and SSDs.

The initial roster featured over 40 teams, but after two online open qualifiers, the only remaining teams were Avalon.HEXA, Imaginary Friends, ChaosTheory.Orion, No Use Talking, Angelababy, Elvellon, and the eventual finalists Unestablished.Juniors and Avalon.Tempo.

In the end, Avalon.Tempo secured the SGD 3000, with Unestablished.Juniors at second place and an SGD 1500 bounty, and Angelababy taking SGD 600 home. Avalon.Hexa, despite being one of the first to qualify, finished 4th place, leaving the place a bit short on cash, but not empty-handed (everyone from 1st to 8th place got prizes ranging from Samsung Gaming Monitors and Logitech Keyboard/Mouse/Headset combos to… not too shabby gaming mousepads).

While the teams played splendidly all around (maybe some unnecessary falls), the highlight of the event is easily the winning team, Avalon.Tempo, since they managed to win all their games… except for one against Unestablished.Juniors in Q2. This set them up for a dramatic rematch by getting out of the loser’s brackets, jumping all the way to the finals, and finally trumping Unestabllished.Juniors for the glory (God bless loser brackets?).

The Overwatch Singapore Tournament was the first of its kind and sets a promising precedent for both future showings of the event, and for the rest of this year in Singapore’s Overwatch scene (as the increasing prize support can attest).

You can check every match for free via Zenway Production’s Twitch and YouTube, and keep up with their upcoming events via their Twitter and Facebook.

Love Overwatch? Remember to follow us at SAUCEink Gaming for our Overwatch Streams, featuring gamer girl Sherrillx3!

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