Hi-Rez Expo 2018 drew to a close last night, with no fewer than five esports tournaments (across PC and console) all crowning their champions. Here’s a breakdown of the winners of the three PC competitions.
For everything else that went down at Hi-Rez Expo 2018, check our dedicated page.
First up was the final of the Founder’s Tournament for Hand of the Gods, Hi-Rez’s CCG set within the Smite universe. Hi-Rez have been running qualifying competitions for the game over the past few months, as well as an open tournament at HRX to decide the final tournament bracket of sixteen. The title was eventually claimed by EOEPeach, who dropped only three games on his way to victory.
Soon after that, the finals of the Paladins World Championships between Natus Vincere and Fnatic got underway. After an extremely close semi-final against Nocturns Gaming, Na’Vi seemed extremely comfortable, and after losing the first game of the best-of-seven set, Fnatic had few answers. Na’vi went on to win the championship match with relative ease, cruising to a 4-0 victory.
The final event of the day was the Smite World Championship, which saw the EU and NA regions clash, with Europe’s Team Rival taking on the confusingly-named American team EUnited. Rival lost the first game to an aggressive display from the Americans, but answered back with clever play in game two, taking the series to 1-1. Despite stealing a potentially pivotal Fire Giant in game three, however, they were too far behind to take advantage, and EUnited were able to capitalise on their gold advantage to make it 2-1.
In a relatively balanced game four, Rival had back-to-back objectives stolen away from them, with EUnited able to steal both Fire Giant and Portal Demon, effectively sealing a win for NA. That took the best-of-five series to a final score of 3-1 in favour of the home team, marking the first time NA has won the title since Cognitive Prime lifted the trophy in season one.