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It’s Sunday afternoon, and EPIC40 has concluded. After 141 maps played across the event here in the Kettering Leisure Village, and it was RAPTORS EC who took the trophy after an exciting final on stage.

But before we go into the final, we’ll talk through the rest of the EPIC40 Playoffs bracket, and how those teams got there.

EPIC40 Upper Bracket

Upper Semi-Final

Soul’s Land 0-2 MAKE A WISH
K10 0-2 RAPTORS EC (Overpass 10-13, Nuke 3-13)

Upper Final

MAKE A WISH 0-2 RAPTORS EC (Vertigo 10-13, Inferno 4-13)

EPIC40 Lower Bracket

Lower Round 2

The Bald, The Gothic and the Squid Nose 0-2 flowstate (5-13, 8-13)
4NR Disposal 2-0 Jeffrey Rizzstein (13-3, 13-9)
Chucklestorm Strikers 2-0 PufflePals (Nuke 13-9, Overpass 16-13)
Granny Knockers, but good 2-0 genetexe (Ancient 13-10, Overpass 13-7)

Lower Round 3

flowstate 2-1 4NR Disposal
Chucklestorm Strikers 0-2 Granny Knockers, but good (Overpass 6-13, Mirage 7-13)

Lower Semi-Final

Soul’s Land 2-0 flowstate (Inferno 19-15, Overpass 13-9)
K10 2-0 Granny Knockers, but good

Lower Final

Soul’s Land 1-2 K10 (Ancient 13-7, Vertigo 8-13, Nuke 9-13)

Consolidation Final

The Consolidation Final opened up on the morning, just before the Grand Final took to the stage to determine who would join RAPTORS EC in the Grand Final. After two maps, the latter going into overtime, and despite the heroics of Zy “yz0” Esponilla, K10 took the series in a comfortable 2-0 fashion to give them a solid break before taking the stage for a rematch of their Upper Bracket Semi Final match.

MAKE A WISH 0-2 K10 (Vertigo 11-13, Anubis 12-16)

EPIC40 Grand Final

The teams took to the stage, and after a short delay due to a couple technical problems the two teams kicked off just after 1:30pm. In terms of vetoes, Inferno and Anubis were banned out first before Vertigo, Ancient and Overpass were picked as the maps for the finalists.

K10, who picked into Vertigo, kicked off the Grand Final with the pistol round and raced ahead to a 5-1 lead. However, helped along by a heroic Reegan “ReegaN” Ward performance, they tightened the gap up to 5-4. K10 took control of their T-side performance, dropping just the final round of the half to go in 7-5 ahead.

It looked like that gap would be narrowed after the pistol round, but a magnificent 1v3 display from Jamie “Tree60” Callan kept K10 firmly in control of the map. This was followed by K10 winning a 4v2 retake in the following round. But from there, RAPTORS went on a charge and won six rounds in a row to take the lead in the match for the first time. ReegaN pulled off a number of multi-kill rounds to both start that run, and keep it going. But it was Adam “Adam9130” Ahmed, plugging away throughout the map, that led the scoreboard (with a 2.02 HLTV.org rating) for his team to race for that victory, not dropping a single round on the way to taking Vertigo 13-9.

Map two headed to Ancient, and it commenced in similar fashion to the first with K10 taking the pistol round and the following two on their CT side, but were unable to continue that run as RAPTORS hit back, and hit hard. On their way to an 8-4 half time lead, they dropped just the one gun round, a nervy 3v1 in K10’s favour that William “Wiiam” O’Shea prevented ReegaN from claiming.

The second half pistol round went into the hands of RAPTORS EC as well, extending their lead through to their CT Side. Marco “MMS” Salomone secured an incredible triple kill to close it out with the Dual Beretta pistols, slowly becoming a strong meta pick for the pistol round. While RAPTORS converted the next round for a 10-4 lead, K10 showed they weren’t out just yet and started fighting back. A key buy round, secured after a 3v5, sent RAPTORS to a half buy which they were unable to convert, placing K10 back in the fight and reaching 10-10 with six rounds in a row. A seventh placed them in the lead for the first time this map, but RAPTORS finally broke through their opponent’s streak in the following round with a rapid site retake and them defusing right in the open. From there RAPTORS went to map point, and performed similar heroics as they defused the bomb in the open again, the team protecting their defuser to take the map 13-11.

RAPTORS EC 2-0 K10 (Vertigo 13-9, Ancient 13-11)

UKCSGO MVP

After a strong performance throughout the tournament, capped off during the Grand Final, the UKCSGO MVP was awarded to ReegaN of RAPTORS EC. During the Grand Final, ReegaN had a number of key individual plays on Vertigo, and topped the scoreboard during that fightback from RAPTORS on Ancient. This came after an exceptionally strong performance all tournament long for his team, as they raced to the title to complete the Insomnia and EPIC.LAN double.

ReegaN was also crowned the MVP of EPIC40 by EPIC.LAN themselves.

EPIC40 Final Standings

In total, £3,750 of prize money was dished out to the teams. The full, final standings of EPIC40 for all 32 teams are as follows:

First: RAPTORS EC (£1,850)
Second: K10 (£900)
Third: MAKE A WISH (£425)
Fourth: Soul’s Land (£275)

Fifth/Sixth: flowstate (£75)
Fifth/Sixth: Granny Knockers, but good (£75)
Seventh/Eighth: 4NR Disposal (£75)
Seventh/Eighth: Chucklestorm Strikers (£75)

Ninth-Twelfth: The Bald, The Gothic and the Squid Nose
Ninth-Twelfth: Jeffrey Rizzstein
Ninth-Twelfth: PufflePals
Ninth-Twelfth: genetexe

13th-16th: Frogians
13th-16th: Ross Kemp Bald
13th-16th: I need more bullets!
13th-16th: Left Lean Gang

17th-20th: Flashing Somewhere
17th-20th: The Binmen
17th-20th: Team Invictum
17th-20th: I-I-I-_-I-I-I

21st-24th: Algorithm
21st-24th: VALIANCE
21st-24th: The Last Resort
21st-24th:  Weenie Hut Jr’s

25th-28th: The Book Club
25th-28th: Temporary Fire
25th-28th: Tokugaywa
25th-28th: Sharp Dressed Men

29th-32nd: Litter Pickers
29th-32nd: TESCOOL
29th-32nd: Diablo
29th-32nd: Granny’s Knockers