The pre-season group games for the ESL African Championship concluded last night with one of the most hotly-anticipated matchup of the tournament.
To kick off the final group games, Bravado Gaming took on Energy eSports for the top spot on the pre-season leaderboard.
Bravado was trailing by two points and needed the win to sneak past Energy to be seeded first going into the pre-season playoffs.
Through a number of tactful decisions and blatant open battles, Energy managed to hold on to their undefeated record for the tournament, to finish the pre-season group games with a record of 7-0-0 with 21 points.
Losing the match means that Bravado stays in second place on the log, with 16 points and a record of 5-1-1.
Now that the pre-season group games are completed, the top four teams have a two week break to focus on the pre-season finals on 15 July.
Through the seeding structure, Energy will compete against Big 5 eSports, and Bravado will do battle with Damage Control.
Once a winner is determined in each of the semi-final games, will the top two teams go head-to-head for the opportunity to claim pre-season victory.
"GG to @EnergyeSportsZA taking the 1st map from us. To confirm to everyone, this is only seedings for the playoffs which happen on 15 July!" Bravado posted on Twitter.
After the match, Bravado tweeted their congratulations to Energy. "We go 0-2 in our last game of the @ESL_Africa vs @EnergyeSportsZA GG WP - playoffs on the 15th of July for the top4 teams - see you then <3," they said.
To round out the pre-season, the last match for the night took place between xTc Gaming and Flipsid3 Africa.
The win for Flipsid3 secured them a spot above xTc Gaming on the leaderboard, with a record of 2-1-4 against xTc's 1-2-4. The bottom four teams will now enter the relegation phase for a shot to compete in the full season's group stages, while the top four teams have automatically qualified.
The final rankings for the pre-season are:
"We made the ESL Africa playoffs by placing 4th in the ESL Africa Season 1 League behind first place Energy eSports, second place Bravado Gaming and third place Damage Control. Well played to all teams who competed. Way more CS to come with a huge prize pool and the crown up for grabs!" Big 5 Gaming wrote on Facebook.