It is now Saturday and the second day of the 2009 US and EU Regional Finals. The Grand Finals are up for watching later on the stream with team Woah waiting anxiously to see who they will face after the x6 vs eDawgs lineup in the Lower Bracket finals.

Before we get into the excitement and thrills expected of the matches today though, we wanted to do a small recap of the matches and highlights from the day before.

In the Upper brackets yesterday, we saw team Woah and aAa Nawak face off in what would eventually be a 3-0 win for Woah. Team Woah, who was expected to perform well in this tournament, displayed some amazingly well coordinated plays in this match, in particular by Ocelote - Woah's warrior, who pulled off some of the best plays a warrior has displayed in a tournament and was backed up perfectly by InFlame.

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises early on was Ensidia's defeat to RimP. The 3-2 score this exciting match left Ensidia getting knocked down to the Lower Brackets after their very first game, an outcome that surprised many players who considered Ensidia one of the biggest tournament favourites.

After eDawgs had knocked SK Gaming EU to the Lower Brackets in the very first match, leaving both of the tournament favourites in the Lower Brackets, round 2 of the Upper Brackets had them matched up against RimP. Noteworthy highlights from this match include Raeli's quality rogue play in shutting down Phildryzen. RimP, who now were quickly becoming an interesting name in the tournament ended up getting knocked down to the Lower Brackets in a 1-3 defeat, just after knocking Ensidia down themselves.

In the first round of the Lower Brackets, x6tence were set to face off against aAa RAT after having lost their first match of the tournament to Woah. Despite good efforts by aAa RAT, they were unable to kill neither x6tence's Paladin nor their Death Knight and ended up losing 0-3 to x6tence, much thanks to x6tence's well executed kills of aAa RAT's priest.

The second match in the Lower Brackets round 1, between SK Gaming EU and Ensidia, was probably one of the closest matches of the tournament so far. In the end though, SK Gaming EU's "cleave" setup for this round won the match in a 3-2 victory.

After both of the first round Lower Bracket matches had been played, x6tence were set to face off against RiMP, and aAa nawak to face off against SK Gaming EU. The match between x6tence and RimP was pretty much a one way show with x6tence's hunter saving Bestial Wrath for after DaisyD had used iceblock. With hypothermia up and Iceblock off limits, x6tence pulled off clean kills three times, resulting in a 3-0 win.

The other match in the Lower Brackets round 2 showed us just how close and exciting these World of Warcraft matches can be. Highlights include rounds ending in a 2v2 or 1v1 almost twice and a single well timed Death Grip saving the tournament spot for SK Gaming EU in their last match on Ring of Valor. The match ended in an exciting 3-2 to SK gaming who were now set to face off against x6tence in the 3rd round of the Lower Brackets.

In Friday's last WoW match, we got to see some very high quality play by both eDawgs and Woah. Highlights include a perfect opening onto Ocelote with a CheapShot -> KidneyShot -> Dismantle leaving Ocelote at roughly 1k HP in the first round of the match. This was then followed with a perfectly timed Imp Counterspell on Woah's druid, sealing the deal and leaving Ocelote defenseless. After suffering a loss in the first round, Woah's druid decided to re-spec into Insect Swarm, sacrificing Wild Growth. Noteworthy here is that along with this re-spec, Woah's strategy changed to a defensive style, making good use of the added druid damage, and allowing Woah to come back with three consecutive wins in a row. Woah could not be happier, now being guaranteed a spot at Blizzcon 2009 for the Global Finals and ready to potentially represent Europe as the regional champions, provided they can pull off the big W today.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is where we are at this point. Excitement and anxiety can be felt in every room of the venue both by the players, spectators, and yours truly. With high profile final rounds in both Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft coming up, we invite everyone to tune in to our livestream which can be found here: http://eu.blizzard.com/rf09/index.xml

Stay tuned as we make our way through the tournament rounds here in Cologne, Germany today!

Results are in from the first matches of the day in both Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft. First up on the stream was the Warcraft 3 match between Grubby and Nicker. Grubby, appearing to be very well prepared for the day, opened up the first round with complete domination by killing Nicker's hero very early. The round was over almost before it had started.

In the second round Nicker put up a little more of a fight, resulting in a huge skirmish between each player's respective armies. Despite Nicker's best efforts though, Grubby took control of the fight and swiftly dealt with Nicker's army and sealed the game in a very tasty 2-0 victory.

Next up on the stream was the much anticipated game between x6tence and eDawgs. x6tence, who up until this point had not lost a single round against an RMP team, were to face off against one of the strongest RMP teams of the tournament so far. The pressure and anticipation against x6tence did not seem to make much of an impact though as the first round ended almost as quickly as it started. eDawgs opened up with a Shatter Combo on Souler, x6tence's paladin, but bubble saved the day and allowed x6tence to quickly turn it around into a killing blow on eDawgs priest. The pressure applied by x6tence's Hunter and Death Knight was simply too overwhelming at this point for even Pain Suppression to make much of a difference.

The second round started somewhat differently as eDawgs were able to apply a lot of pressure on x6tence's paladin. Despite good efforts though, eDawgs were unable to capitalise on the momentum they had build up. A combination of deterrence and BoP on Siler, x6tence's Hunter, left eDawgs once again as the underdogs of the round as Stgeorge gets shut down and killed in a very quick turning of the tides.

The last round brought about an interesting change; namely the fact that eDawgs at this point had changed out their priest for a paladin in hopes of surviving the immense amounts of damage StGeorge had taken in the previous rounds. x6tence picked up on the change of classes quickly and adapted their strategy to the 'next squishy target in line', namely Saori the mage. After receiving a lot of pressure early on, Saori was forced to use his IceBlock in order to stay alive and get healed up. eDawgs then managed to set up an combo attack on Siler who survived a full duration Kidneyshot before x6tence again jumped onto Saori, now with hypothermia preventing him from using a second Iceblock.

The match ended, perhaps not unsuspectedly, with Saori going down and x6tence pulling off that sweet, sweet 3-0 victory. x6tence played the match exceptionally well and earned their spots in both the EU Regional Grand Finals and the Worldwide Grand Finals at Blizzcon 2009.