The past weekend saw the conclusion of the second tournament organized on the Axie Esports server. A quick, single-elimination invitational for players from the Middle East North Africa (MENA) Region happened quietly on August 27th, bringing together 17 players from the region who vied for a total prize pool of 85 AXS.

The tournament was streamed by Eruine42 on twitch in Arabic, with an English stream provided by Blytz Esports. Kudos to the commentators for the English stream from Singapore who stayed up all night from half-past two till half-past six in the morning to provide non-Arabic speakers an avenue to follow the tournament with commentary. Their dedication is unmatched, and they will only improve as they continue to gain experience.

The tournament gave viewers a peek into the Axie Esports scene in MENA that looks like it is in its infancy. The most obvious areas for improvement are to provide open public access to view updated brackets as well as announce the winners of the tournament on social media for accountability as well as allow everyone to keep up with the tournament easily.

The word to use to describe most of the matches is ‘repetition’. Repetition of tried and tested successful plays as well as repeated misplays from competitors in multiple matches.

Final results

Zaytoooona 3 - 2 Omarkh57

We witnessed a second come from behind victory in the final (like what Elijah pulled out from the bag in the Axie E1337 Open #2) as Zaytoooona clawed back to win the tournament 3-2 from two down, a laudable feat that required much mental strength to pull off. This is the updated bracket I pieced together from watching the stream.

_{Scores not available (unfortunately) because not all games were shown and it was hard to keep track of the matches while watching the stream.}

The most notable axie in the tournament came in the form of a beast with confident that stole a match with a 5 tick last stand.

_{Not over just yet, mister… Watch the confident beast’s 5 tick last stand!}

A termi-reptile variant with doubletalk instead of chomp also wins a mention for the most successfully repeated combos.

_{Double lagging, followed by a repeated double talk-thorny caterpillar combo in the following round. Rinse and repeat to win the final.}

Congrats to the winners of the tournament! Hopefully the next time a MENA tournament comes round, the Axie Esports scene in the region would have matured some, and we will see a much larger pool of competitors with increased sophistication in their plays. As the saying goes, the best place to start is at the beginning, and Axie Esports in MENA has just begun. A milestone worth celebrating. Only onward from here!

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_{Read my reports of previous tournaments
Axie E1337 Open #2}

_{Randombrute's twitter - https://twitter.com/randombrute_axs}