OpTic Gaming’s Gears of War dominance continued in Mexico

Connor Bennett

OpTic Gaming’s Gears of War squad continued their dynastic dominance with a tournament victory at the Gears Pro Circuit Mexico City Open.

The Green Wall are usually the favorites heading into any Gears of Wars event and it was no different in Mexico. 

Only Ghost Gaming have been able to deny them a tournament win in the last five events, but from the start it looked like destiny that they would be defending their crown and picking up the Mexico City Open trophy yet again. 

The Greenwall stood tall despite taking a few hits.

OpTic got their weekend off to a hot start with 2-0 sweeps of their Group A games against Team Reciprocity, Elevate and Orlando Reapers. They turned that momentum into a Winners Bracket Finals run, defeating Buddy Buddy and Simplicity in the quarter and semi-finals – again by 2-0 scorelines.

However, they were surprisingly defeated 2-0 in the Winners Finals by Denial Esports, dropping them into the Losers bracket and making their chance at success just look less certain. However, the Green Wall was rebuilt and they secured a 2-1 victory over crowd favorites Ghost Gaming to set-up a Grand Finals rematch against Denial.

It took some incredible plays from Gilbert ‘Xplosive’ Rojo to secure map one of the Grand Finals and push the series closer to a bracket reset. The OpTic Gaming star maintained hill control despite having no support.

Looking to pick up the first map, Xplosive quickly action rolled around cover to pick up two quick kills, pushing Denial back while his teammates finally swarmed to him as they captured the hill.

From that point forward, it was plain sailing for OpTic. 

While Denial had been the only team to trouble them at the event, they were able to secure a reset of the Grand Finals bracket as they picked up a 4-0 sweep, a new piece of hardware for the trophy case and $80,000 in prize money. 

Final standings

 
Team placing Prize Money
1st – OpTic Gaming $80,000
2nd – Denial Esports $40,000
3rd – Ghost Gaming $28,000
4th – Simplicity $20,000
5th/6th – Mazer Gaming $8,000
5th/6th – Spacestation Gaming $8,000
7th/8th – Team Reciprocity $4,000
7th/8th – Rise Nation $4,000
9th/12th – Collateral $2,000
9th/12th – Orlando Reapers $2,000
9th/12th – Buddy Buddy $2,000
9th/12th – Elevate $2,000