The third day of the Apex Legends Global Series in EMEA wasn’t short on excitement. In a lobby where no team ever established a lead greater than eight points, Nemesis stole away a dramatic victory from the other contenders today, narrowly beating out Vexed Gaming by a single point, with both teams finding themselves in the top three of the final game of the day.Â
The first game of the day featured an ending between two heavyweights when Guild Esports and Alliance looked to be heading to a straight-up three-vs-three fight. The presence of 789, however, complicated things and allowed Guild to gain the upper hand.
Looking to finish kills onto the remnants of 789, Guild found an opening knock onto Ming-Liang Oscar “Yuki” Jiang. Without Yuki in the fight, Guild pushed forward fearlessly, running over the rest of Alliance and taking the game one victory. Alliance still held their own, wracking up 16 points from the game, and it was also a strong start from 789, just behind with 15 points. Featuring some of the original EMEA heavyweights in former Luminosity members Elvira “Esdesu” Temirova and Anton “xaniya” Shkuratov, it was an encouraging game one for the free agent team who suffered a slow start to the Pro League split.
The second game finished in the northeast of Storm Point, to the south of Lightning Rod, and the wide open areas proved to be a playground for Rascals and their team composition featuring Fuse.
With three teams remaining, Rascals used a Fuse ultimate to trap Magicians behind a rock with the zone at their backs, allowing them to fight off Alliance without the danger of a third party. After winning that fight, it was a relatively easy fight to take out Magicians, who were forced to either take storm damage or run directly forward over their rock. With no Gibraltar dome shield to give the team cover, that damage taken before the fight even began spelled their doom. The game propelled Rascals into second place overall, but Alliance’s consistency saw them take the overall lead in the lobby.
Game three took the lobby to Cenote Caves, an exciting endgame POI thanks to the variety of cover and rotation options both above and below teams. It was there that UNDERRATED strolled to victory thanks to their superior positioning.
With six teams still alive and the final circle closing, nearly every team in the lobby began fighting over buildings that would soon be outside of safety with the ring closing in. UNDERRATED were the only team that even attempted to take the high ground opposite those buildings and picked up their kill points from afar while the rest of the lobby wiped each other out. The final fight was elementary and UNDERRATED cleaned up a High Society team that only had one member alive. The result kept the lobby incredibly close, with Guild and Alliance tied for the lead, while first place and ninth were only separated by 10 points.
The switch to World’s Edge brought the teams to the chaos that is Thermal Station end zones, with teams stacked up in buildings, behind rock outcroppings, and on cliffs at the extreme edges of the map. Eight teams managed to co-exist as the final circle began closing, but soon it was down to one since Fenerbahce Esports cut through the ordinance and smoke to win the game.
T-REX looked like the likely victors, dancing around Gibraltar dome shields and dealing out massive damage. Fenerbahce, as they’ve done before, came out of nowhere to steal away the win. With both T-REX and Fenerbahce having slow starts to the day, game four did little to provide clarity to the lobby. The top 13 teams were now within 14 points of each other and everything was up for grabs in the final two games.
High Society took full advantage of the close lobby, winning game five and jumping up to first place in the lobby courtesy of a perfect Valkyrie play from Mikolaj “KIMCZU” Klimczyk.
With the final circle closing out in the open basin of Geyser, KIMCZU took to the skies to avoid taking damage as long as possible, letting his teammates and other teams fight. It’s a tactic we’ve seen before from Valkyries, but it also requires some clutch shots from the Valk player when they inevitably have to land to work. KIMCZU did just that, laying down damage with a Flatline and Peacekeeper and clutching out the victory for High Society.
High Society wouldn’t hold on to that lead, however, going out in 16th place in the final game and leaving the door wide open for the rest of the lobby. With Nemesis and Vexed neck and neck, it was iG International who won the final game of the day and inadvertently sealed the overall win for Nemesis.
It was a massive game for iG, who sat in the bottom half of the leaderboard before game six. The game win also came with 15 kills and the resulting 27-point game more than tripled their total score on the day, finishing in fifth place. Vexed could have taken the overall win on the day if they could have somehow beaten iG for the win, but iG’s positioning above the team was simply too strong and Nemesis’ eight kills in game six to Vexed’s four proved to be the deciding factor as the team came from behind to secure full points on the day.
After both lobbies finished, the results in Group D vs. Group B meant iG international, Vexed Gaming, and Nemesis all had established places in the top 10 of EMEA at the halfway mark of Split Two. It was also an important day for Alliance, who shook off their slow start to Split Two with a fourth-place finish and found themselves only five points away from the 10th and final playoff position on the Pro League leaderboard.
The games keep coming fast and furious for EMEA. Both lobbies return to action tomorrow and continue every day until the split concludes on Monday, March 28.
