After 2 weeks of intense battles, SKADE came out on top, overcoming some of the tournament's biggest names on the path to $60,000
It took 8 matches and 18 maps for SKADE to overcome all in their path, and be the conquerers of Pinnacle Cup III. They toppled Vitality & MOUZ NXT, two of the biggest names in the tournament, with only KOVA putting up a defeat for SKADE right at the beginning of the tournament. After that initial slip up, SKADE won all their matches, and dropped just a single further map, to Into The Breach. As alluded to earlier, they were able to wipeout Vitality who had entered the competition directly at the quarter final stage of the playoffs. the Bulgarian team in SKADE took down the Vitality squad without them getting a map at all, Vitality were able to close in on the map points, going 16-13 on Overpass & 10-16 on Dust2, however were never able to notch quite enough to keep SKADE down. This meant that the likely favourites for the tournament were sent home without winning a single map in the tournament, unexpected to many for sure. Before facing the Frenchmen, SKADE saw off MOUZ NXT, the next likely favourites for the win. However the NXT crew also failed to find a way through the Bulgarian powerhouse performance that dream3r & SHiPZ gave all tournament long.
SKADE's opponent in the final, Copenhagen Flames had also had a rather good run to the final, overcoming the likes of ENCE, Dignitas & the Young Ninjas. However when faced with the eventual winner, the Flames fell apart and across just two maps, scored 10 rounds to SKADEs 32, going 16-14 on Overpass & 6-16 on Nuke.
Coming up for SKADE is the ESL Challenger League, starting on April 4th. Unfortunately for them, they didn't make it to the Major Ranking events for this cycle, so we won't see them at the RMR events in a few weeks time, however here is hoping they have better luck qualifying for the second Major of the Year, scheduled for November. Meanwhile, Copenhagen Flames will also be at the ESL Challenger League, as well as the B side of the RMR Major event starting 21st April.