Cleared for takeoff: Zach and Reveal win the RLCS 2v2 North America Open

Middle Eastern and North American fans alike all had duos in mind for who they thought would be able to take down Zen and Atow in the RLCS 2v2 World Championship. Neither of those teams will be representing their regions in Boston.

While we’ll talk about the MENA showdown in a later installment, here’s what you missed from the RLCS 2v2 NA Open gameplay this weekend.

The worst blown lead in RLCS history?

You probably expected BeastMode and Daniel to be the duo highlighted in this article, and I think they did as well. Jamesbot certainly did, as he decided to update the overlay to give NRG it’s third game win as DanMode went up by two goals with five seconds to go against Tawk and Cheese.

Cheese certainly didn’t think the game was over, however, as he pounced on Tawk’s fifty-fifty at the kickoff circle and smacked it past an overcommitting Daniel to get one goal back.

On the ensuing kickoff, Tawk bumped the ball high and BeastMode jumped to guide it back down to the ground to end the game, but Cheese dove in desperation and managed to keep it in the air for long enough to give Tawk a chance to race from the corner boost back to the ball.

Tawk used his entire tank to carry the ball over Daniel, grazing the ceiling and dropping down perfectly for Cheese, who had been spun 180 degrees after bumping BeastMode and was now facing a wide open net for a equalizing tap in.

Tawk and Cheese were back from the brink. They were able to wrench the series from the hands of NRG after a five minute overtime win and a closely contested Champions Field showdown to knock BeastMode and Daniel to the lower bracket.

There, Tawk’s teammates 2Piece and Wahvey were waiting to sweep the clearly tilted NRG duo to advance to the playoffs.

‘Sup, Sup?

Matter and Xpurt were a fun team to watch this weekend, making an appearance on Championship Sunday after a roller-coaster Friday. The duo went down early to prospects Pigeon and Resonal before roaring back to win three straight games and complete the reverse sweep.

They then opened up their series against Spacestation with 2 straight wins before falling victim to a reverse sweep of their own.

They defeated Fiv3Up and Bora in the lower bracket to advance to the playoffs.

Matter and Xpurt combined forces to take down 2Piece and Wahvey in the opening match of the top 8, and also physically combined in that series to score a full-field 98-mile-per-hour team pinch. They were eliminated by another fun duo in Evoh and Diaz of “Not Really Good,” a team we’ll touch on soon.

The Journey of the Final Four

The Zach and Reveal duo and Tawk and Cheese duo were only half of the final four field, with Evoh and Diaz making it past Sup to face off against Spacestation, and the old 2017 nightmare twos team of Firstkiller and Atomic surviving the lower bracket to take on Tawk and Cheese.

Tequeños, Atomic and Firstkiller’s team, looked primed for a Zatow run of their own. They dropped one game in the entire first weekend, went 9-0 in games in Swiss, and took their first five games of the Group Stage on Friday. Somehow, someway, however, everything fell apart.

Evoh and Diaz turned on the jets. What started as a 2 goal win in game 3 to avoid the sweep turned into 5-2 and 6-1 thrashings to complete a reverse sweep, the third of the tournament.

Evoh and Diaz took that momentum in stride, taking the first three games off Tawk and Cheese before, you guessed it, ANOTHER reverse sweep! North America, it might be high time to invest in some mental coaches.

In the semifinals, Tawk and Cheese took care of business in six games over Firstkiller and Atomic, who seemed doomed to fail as soon as their opponents had the match point advantage on top of the cursed grounds of Neo Tokyo.

Spacestation and NotReallyGood had an entertaining back-and-forth affair before Reveal and Zach outlasted Evoh and Diaz on Champions Field, winning the decider 1-0.

SSG got two lopsided wins against Tawk and Cheese in the finals, but the Chawk duo got right back in the series following an overtime win and a 2-1 defensive battle on Utopia.

Spacestation Gaming saw the urgency needed to snuff out that comeback right where it started, responding with a shutout on Parc de Paris before eviscerating Cheese and Tawk 7-3 to take home the North America 2v2 Open.

Reveal and Zach will be representing NA in the four-team 2v2 bracket in Texas, and will face off against Zen and Atow in the opening round.