N/A in Playoffs

We’ll admit we love a good storyline, whether it’s a player returning to haunt the team that kicked them or a team going on a magical run on home soil. You can’t deny there’s beauty in that.

But we also love laughing at people's downfall, especially when NA gets involved. So, boy, has Dallas been some comedy gold.

North America has four representatives over at IEM Dallas. In turmoil Liquid, hometown heroes Complexity, and now-it’s-just-sad EG. While we know that Ryan deluded NA fans count the whole Americas as theirs, we’re ignoring FURIA and 9z. Because it doesn’t make a difference, even if you count them, 0 (that’s ZERO) made it to the playoffs.

Three NA teams were drawn into the same group, all with tough opening games. EG played FaZe, Complexity faced ENCE, and Liquid played Astralis. You’d imagine FaZe V EG would have the biggest gulf in quality, yet, somehow, that game went all the way to overtime before FaZe clinched it.

With a close game like that, you’d almost think Complexity and Liquid had a chance. Almost. Because unlike EG, they were blown out of the water. The end results were still the same; they were thrown down into the lower bracket. CoL even had the pleasure of drawing EG.

At this point, desperation had to set in for the NA fans. One of EG and CoL was set to be knocked out already whilst the winner had to face one of Astralis/Cloud 9. That winner? Come on. Obviously, it was CoL because EG doesn’t do winning. Meanwhile, Liquid won a game against Grayhound that might as well have been a Bo5.

At this point, there were two NA teams alive. They avoided each other in the draw, and… wait, who do they play then? Oh, CoL plays C9, and Liquid plays FaZe… right.

We’d love to pretend that maybe one of the teams could’ve done some magic, and to be fair, Complexity did manage to trade punches to a decider against C9. They just also got 16:2’d on that decider. Liquid didn’t even get to go to three maps; FaZe, for once, decided they wanted to close out. Even if that means Twistzz tried to ninja defuse what could’ve potentially been Nitr0’s last-ever round of pro-CS. At least they saw some humour in it.

You might have noticed we left a team out. We mentioned 4 NA teams but only named EG, Liquid, and CoL. That’s because Nouns were here also!

The reason we left them out is… frankly, we forgot about them, and can you blame us? They only mustered 12 rounds across 3 maps. Specifically, FURIA just hammered them. We’re sure NA fans themselves would’ve rather we forgot about them.

So, there’ll be no NA teams in the playoffs of IEM Dallas. But there is one North American left, Twistzz, a lone NA star in The Lone Star State.