And with that, the European Regional Finals are over and done with. The Grand Finals for both World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3 have been incredibly intense and nailbiting. Both finals had a double set of rounds as the 'underdogs', as it were, coming up from the Lower Brackets both succeeded in taking the first set of rounds respectively.

It is with that in mind that we will take a deeper look into the different rounds of each game's finals. First up is World of Warcraft, featuring x6tence coming up from the Lower Brackets to face off against Woah for the title of European Champions.

The first round starts off in the Dalaran Sewers. Pressure is being applied to both teams, and Inflame is taking a lot of damage. A clutch teleport gives Kae a breather which lets him catch up on healing while his team mates continue to apply pressure on x6tence, ultimately resulting in Falcons death. The first round goes to Woah.

Round two takes place in the Orgrimmar arena. Kae, team Woah's druid gets through a repentence from x6tence's paladin while Inflame is getting low. Inflame manages to stay alive much thanks to very nice support and cooperation with Ocelote, the warrior. x6tence are putting pressure on Woah and move in for a pet kill before swapping to Inflame who has Mortal Strike applied to him. Meanwhile, Woah are applying pressure everywhere and move for a kill on Falcon. Finally, Kae manages to pull off a clutch cyclone on Siler allowing Woah to drop Falcon and take the round. It is now 2-0 to Woah.

The third round takes place on the Blades Edge arena. Inflame starts the match out by placing his portal on the ramp, setting up his 'escape strategy'. Meanwhile, the two warriors are duking it out against eachother before Siler makes a swap to Woah's druid, Kae. Siler hits his bladestorm ability and, combined with a well coordinated Strangulate -> Bladestorm -> HoJ, is able to drop Kae pretty rapidly. x6tence takes this round, making it a 2-1 to Woah.

As round 4 starts, we see Kae positioning himself defensively in attempt to avoid the swap that caused the loss in the previous round. Siler starts out by targetting Inflame's pet but gets cycloned. Meanwhile, Falcon finishes off Inflame's pet and it looks like x6tence are setting up for a kill on Inflame. x6tence then changes target to Ocelote who starts to get threateningly low on health before executing a very well coordinated target swap onto Kae. As Kae is taking damage Falcon hits him with a Strangulate which leaves Woah with both Ocelote and Kae low on health. x6tence keeps the pressure up and is able to drop Kae for a sweet, sweet equaliser. The score is now 2-2.

As the 5th and potentially final round starts in the Nagrand arena, each team's warrior start out by charging into eachother. Woah is able to apply some pressure on Souler while Siler gets hit with a cyclone. x6tence, however, are not ready to give up yet and some clutch play allows them to stay alive long enough to return the pressure onto Kae once again. Meanwhile, Falcon has managed to survive both a Bladestorm, a Death Coil and all the damage Ocelote's rage can produce. x6tence keeps up the pressure on Kae and is able to drop him and take the round ending this set in a 3-2 in x6tence's favour.

With this, x6tence - who are up from the Lower Brackets - manages to take this set in a best of 5, resulting in a second set of games being required in order to determine the final outcome of the finals. Not ready to give up just yet, and with everything to gain, x6tence are truly proving themselves as worthy of being here in the European Regional Grand Finals.

After a short break the games start back up in the second set of best of 5, the first round taking place in the Ruins of Lordaeron. x6tence starts off by using Death Grip to pull Ocelote out of position and into the fray of x6tence's damage dealers, forcing Kae - Woah's druid - to come out from his defensive rear positioning. The pressure then shifts from x6tence to Woah who are now targetting Siler with everything they have, including a Bladestorm from Ocelote. Meanwhile, Inflame throws on a fear on Souler who is forced to bubble to keep his team mates alive. Siler, while also receiving the BoP, shifts into Shield Wall in order to stay alive before putting the pressure back onto Ocelote. For a brief moment it looks like Kae is going to be able to keep Ocelote alive, however a well executed target swap onto Kae by x6tence allows them to drop Kae swiftly and take the first round, resulting in a 1-0 to x6tence.

In the second round we find ourselves watching the players getting ready on the Ring of Valor lifts. The round starts out with Ocelote jumping Siler, forcing Souler to heal through Mortal Strike. Woah, not determined to give up just yet, swaps to Falcon but the damage is negated by Souler's heals. x6tence are meanwhile targetting Kae who gets rather low on health while his team mates come to his assistance. A lot of damage swapping between the teams happens before x6tence manages to drop Kae who is under the effect of Mortal Strike. Meanwhile, Ocelote and Inflame have been putting pressure on both Souler and Siler who both go down shortly after Kae. Amazing turnaround in a matter of mere seconds, Woah is able to pull off the big W despite having their druid killed first. The score is now 1-1.

The third round starts on the Blade's Edge Arena with both teams fighting on the lower level under the bridge. Strangulate and Mortal Strike are up on Kae who gets knocked down to 10k health. Woah targets Siler and forces a bubble on Souler, however it is too late - x6tence manages to drop Kae after a nervebitingly long time of putting pressure on Woah. It is now 2-1 to x6tence.

In the fourth round which takes place in the Ruins of Lordaeron we find x6tence opening by pulling Inflame into harms range. Siler follows up with a Bladestorm onto Inflame but it falls somewhat short as Inflame teleports out to the safety of one of the starting areas. The effect of this teleport, however, is not simply just a life saver for Inflame as both teams follow into the starting area duking it out in very close quarters. As Woah are beating on Falcon and getting him low, x6tence are doing the same to Kae who ends up having to trinket a HoJ to bring his life back from a measly low 4k. The round ends with Inflame pulling off a clutch Spell Lock on Souler allowing Ocelot to finish off Falcon off. After 9 Grand Final rounds played the score is now 2-2 in the second set.

The fith and final round of the Grand Finals takes place on Blade's Edge arena. x6tence opens the round on Kae who is forced to trinket an HoJ early. Meanwhile, Woah targets Souler who is forced to use his bubble equally early. x6tence executes a nice target swap to Inflame who gets low and teleports away. Falcon, experienced as he is, is able to pull off a clutch Death Grip and pull Inflame back into harms reach allowing x6tence to pull off the final victory needed to remain the EU Regional Champions.

The final rounds of the European tournament are probably some of the most exciting and nail biting matches this writer has seen in a long, long, time. x6tence has proved to us once again that they are, in fact, the best team in Europe at the moment. Congratulations to them as we wish them the best of luck in the Worldwide Grand Finals at Blizzcon 2009.

Next up: The US Regional Finals!

Yesterday we had a chance to sit down with Kintt who not only is participating today in the 2009 US Regional Finals, but also had a chance to cameo as a shoutcaster. We talked a little about his impressions of tournaments in general, but also a little about his experience as a surprise shoutcaster.

His general thoughts about surprise shoutcasting? It was fun! Kintt went on to tell us that he has severely enjoyed watching the matches, and getting to shoutcast one made the whole event just that much cooler. Being a knowlegable and experienced tournament player, watching matches was for him not just about the enjoyment and entertainment, but also good practise in analysing the games figuring out what each teams were doing right and wrong.

Kintt noted that the difference between tournament matches at level 70 in the past, and level 80 these days, is pretty large. While he previously had to watch out for a lot more independent plays, these days it was a lot more fast paced and paying attention to shorter duration abilities such as Kidney Shot or Counterspell is imperative to following the important happenings of each match. He suggested that people watching the stream keep an eye out for cooldown use for abilities such as counterspell, fear, stuns, trinkets, strangulate and other abilities with similar capability of determining the outcome of a match.

On the topic of what had been the most noteworthy matches he had watched yesterday, the trilling round between Ensidia and SK Gaming EU was one of the first things he mentioned. He also talked a little big about the game where RimP defeated Ensidia 3-2. In his opinion, Ensidia might have made a dubious choice with their composition as they are better known for their abilities as an RMP team.

We then talked a little bit about RMP teams in general, and he went on to tell us that the likely reason that so many teams are going with the composition these days is because noone really has found a consistently effective counter to it. He noted that the composition that team Woah were running (Warrior/Warlock/Druid) had been having seemingly decent win rates versus RMPs and predicted that we might see more people picking it up and learning its' intricacies in the future. He also noted that he thought that RMP mirror matches could have a tendency to have a slightly random outcome due to the nature of an MMORPG if both teams were equally skilled.

Lastly Kintt took the opportunity to share his thoughts on what kind of incentives that tournament play were to offer new potential teams and players. Being able to go out there and experience something new and different, meeting your opponents in person, as well as the hightened level of competitive play were the biggest incentives for the tournament veteran. Lastly he added that obviously the money was a nice additional incentive, but he did not consider it a reason to enter tournaments if one does not already enjoy competitions and challenges.

Many thanks to Kintt for taking the time to talk with us, and we wish him and his team, Pandemic, the best of luck in the US Regionals today!

With the EU finals over and done with it is time to move over to the US matches. As can be seen on our live stream, the matches have already started. Fortunately for those of you who missed the first few games, we had the opportunity to report and recap (some of) the matches as will be presented below in this thread!

Before we give you the recaps though, we would like to remind everyone that the live stream can be found at this url: http://eu.blizzard.com/rf09/

The first game to be shown on the stream was the match between TSG and Complexity Gaming. Both teams are rather well known, featuring capable players such as Happyminti and Veex. Round one starts with HappyMinti opening out on TSG's Zilea by taking a decent chunk of his health bar down within just a few seconds. Meanwhile Venruki of Complexity Gaming is also under heavy fire. Despite Sodah's best efforts and a pain suppression, he is unable to keep Venruki alive thanks to TSG's incredible damage output. 1-0 in TSG's favour.

The second round is probably one of the fastest rounds of the entire tournament thus far. It starts out with Complexity Gaming charging into Zilea to get him low, however he is protected by Anti Magic Shell and is able to get healed back up. TSG on the other hand opens up on Sodah and ends up putting out so much damage that not even Pain Suppression makes much of a difference. It is now 2-0 in TSG's favour.

The third round is set to take place on Blade's Edge. HappyMinti gets a successful sap on Zilea, TSG's Paladin, however it is broken shortly after due to a Blessing of Sacrifice in place on one of his team members. Once again Sodah is taking a lot of damage, however he is this time able to make use of Pain Suppression and get healed back up. While HappyMinti and Venruki are getting Zilea dangerously low, Sodah gets Death Gripped back into harms way and gets more or less instantly blown up.

The match ends 3-0 in TSG's favour and Complexity Gaming gets pushed down to the Lower Brackets off the bat.

The second match to be shown on the stream is "A wild roguemonkey appears" - hereafter named AWRMA - vs SK Gaming US. While SK Gaming US are seasoned tournament veterans, this is the first tournament AWRMA attends as a team. The crowd in the venue, as well as players online are excited to see if what the team can offer in terms of strategy, entertainment and competition.

The first round starts with AWRMA opening up on Dancer, SK Gaming US' mage, forcing an early IceBlock. For the duration the IceBlock is up, AWRMA switches their focus to Realz, but instantly swaps back as soon as the IceBlock is cancelled. Meanwhile, SK are putting pressure on Syia, AWRMA's druid, but is unable to make it count as AWRMA swaps to SK's rogue resulting in a swift killing blow. The first round ends with AWRMA taking the lead, 1-0.

The second round is set to take place in the Ring of Valor, and SK opens on Syia in hopes of forcing an early trinket. The match goes back and forth for a bit with pressure being applied by both teams before SK makes a very well coordinated target swap back onto Syia, dropping him in a matter of seconds thanks to trinket being on cooldown. SK takes this round and the score is now 1-1.

The third round starts up in Nagrand Arena with SK opening up on Syia. Realz is taking some focused damage but manages to get away. The next set of events displays SK Gamings ability to execute very well coordinated CCs as Syia gets blinded, AWRMA's Death Knight gets cheapshotted and SK follows through with an instant target swap to Roguemonkey (AWRMA's Hunter) who dies in a matter of seconds. 2-1 to SK Gaming US.

The fourth round takes place in the Ring of Valor with AWRMA's Death Knight instantly pulling Dancer (SK's Mage) into harm's way with a Death Grip. The instant action does not seem to phase SK Gaming much though as Dancer's team mates do a magnificent job peeling the threat off and lets Dancer escape to safety. The pressure momentum then swaps sides as SK initiate a coordinated attack on Syia, starting with a well timed fear. The fight ends with Syia using his trinket in order to stay alive but to little help as he falls over dead shortly after.

The match ends 3-1 in SK Gaming US' favour as they thank their opponents for a good game.