Some familiar faces met newly-formed teams in OGN Overwatch Apex Season 2, Week 2, on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea. BK Stars, Meta Athena, Lunatic-Hai and Afreeca Freecs Red faced off on the only day of competition before they break to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Newcomers Meta Athena, formerly known as The Meta, were first up to bat. They were undefeated in the APEX Challenger league to earn their spot here, and feature some fantastic players who dazzled the stage against BK Stars. For example, Ha "Sayaplayer" Jeongwoo is an extremely talented hitscan player and a force to be reckoned with. However, in the history of esports, many amateur teams -- even those who blast through the competition in the challenger league -- don't instantly become a top team.
Meta Athena was no exception at first as their teamwork looked incomplete. Even when they were dominating BK Stars, a top-4 team in APEX Season 1, they did questionable things on Temple of Anubis. After getting a solid hold onto the second point, Sin "Alpha" Jaehyeon, on Reinhardt, refused to stick with the rest of his team instead of staying on the point to defend from the respawning members of BK Stars and chased the Ana back to spawn with the intent to kill. Because he wasn't in position and ready to defend and protect his teammates, they were sitting ducks. When BK Stars did respawn, they team-killed Meta Athena with a classic Graviton Surge and D.Va self destruct combo.
Of course, this wasn't a huge deterrent for the newcomers on this day as both teams tied on Temple of Anubis, and Meta Athena won the tie-breaker on Oasis. However, that was such an uncoordinated mess to begin with that most certainly a better team would punish such mistakes. Despite their flaws, Meta Athena is still a good team with a bright future, and they took the match 3-0 against a top finisher from APEX S1.
In the second match of the day, Lunatic-Hai came back with an 8-man roster, hoping they can bring an era of roster flexibility that will lead them back to the top. They were upset in APEX Season 1 by Afreeca Freecs Blue, and for now they had to settle on getting revenge against the organization by playing against the sister team, Afreeca Freecs Red.
While the first map was an easy stomp for Lunatic-Hai, Afreeca Freecs could have easily overtaken Lunatic-Hai on both King's Row and Temple of Anubis. Sure, it was a 3-0 victory for Lunatic-Hai, but this series could have gone either way based on how close both maps were. King's Row and Temple of Anubis came down to a game of inches.
Lunatic High's Lee "WhorU" Seungjoon's performance on Genji stood out. He spent nearly the entire match on Genji, and made clutch plays that helped secure their win, but also potentially reveals a weakness similar to how American team FaZe Clan lived or died on George "ShaDowBurn" Gushcha's Genji toward the end of 2016, before he learned to play different heroes.
As exciting as OGN APEX has been so far this year, the games will not resume until Monday after the Lunar New Year celebration.