Today’s series between the Seoul Dynasty and London Spitfire was supposed to be the grand finale to a week full of close and exciting Overwatch League matches. But London Spitfire threw out that script.
The Spitfire absolutely dominated Dynasty tonight, crushing them in a swift 4-0 sweep.
The match was an incredibly important one for stage two playoff standings. The result pushes Spitfire and Dynasty to 6-2 on the split, in a three-way tie with the Los Angeles Gladiators. But the 4-0 map score puts Spitfire in second place with a +14 tally and drops the Dynasty out of playoff play sitting at +9, three maps behind the Gladiators’ +12 mark.
Not only was the win important for Spitfire, but the dominant margin of victory was too. And while that’s not what fans and pundits hoped for heading into Saturday, in many ways, the result was no surprise.
The scoreline mimics the scoreline of the two teams’ only other meeting during stage one of the OWL: Dynasty failed to take a map off Spitfire in their previous meeting. In fact, the streak dates back to before the OWL, where GC Busan, part of the core of Spitfire, were undefeated against Lunatic Hai. The pre-game hype reel saw one Spitfire player call the Dynasty’s only weakness the London Spitfire, and that proved prescient tonight.
The Spitfire coaching staff took advantage of the GC Busan curse, if you will, fielding off tank player Sung “WooHyaL” Seung Hyun in place of Kim “Fury” Jun Ho, making half the lineup former GC Busan players, and WooHyaL and company certainly had Dynasty’s number. The Spitfire’s strength on the counter-dive made Dynasty look silly throughout the series. They had a bead on Dynasty’s legendary support duo. They even outplayed Dynasty’s vaunted DPS superstar Kim “Fleta” Byung Sun.
It’s easy to be overshadowed in a server with titans like Park “Profit” Joon Yeong and Fleta, but the most impressive DPS tonight—on the first two maps, at least—had to be Kim “Birdring” Ji Hyuk. The former Kongdoo Panthera man was unstoppable on Hanamura and Lijiang Tower, playing a plethora of heroes including Widowmaker, Genji, and McCree.
The third map, King’s Row, looked like Seoul’s chance to get into the series, but after pushing the cart with ease to the final section of the map, Spitfire closed the door. Profit swapped to Zarya and his play on the hero proved too strong for Dynasty to handle. With the series over at 3-0, Dynasty still had one last chance to take a map. They looked strong to open on offense, but Spitfire again closed the door before the last checkpoint and proceeded to dominate their own turn pushing the payload.
While the Dynasty fall out of playoff position in stage two, for now, they’re still tied with Spitfire at 13-5 on the season overall. But Dynasty needs to go back to the drawing board to find some answers against the Spitfire—the Dynasty certainly look improved recently, but it’s clear they’re clueless against one of their biggest rivals.
