After a second-place finish at the last LAN event, the best team in Gears of War 4 is back on top. OpTic Gaming emerged victorious at this weekend’s Gears Pro Circuit Atlantic City Open, taking home the championship and $70,000.
Following their loss in the finals to Team EnVyUs at the Gears Pro Circuit Mexico City Open in January, OpTic Gaming made a slight roster change, replacing Chris “Lava” Anderson with Nicholas “Red Icy” Cope. Icy joined the core four of Gilbert “Xplosive” Rojo, Billy “MentaL” Putnam, Alex “SuMuNs” Ascencion, and Justin “Kenny” Kenny that has been competing under the OpTic banner since August 2016.
This revamped OpTic roster traveled to New Jersey with one goal in mind: to reclaim their title as the best team in Gears. And the Green Wall started out strong, going undefeated in pool play without dropping a single map.
Moving on to the championship winners bracket, OpTic remained perfect, defeating eUnited, Hazard Esports and EnVyUs, also without losing a map, to secure their spot in the grand finals.
Ghost Gaming went on a remarkable cinderella run in the losers bracket, but it was cut short when EnVyUs eliminated them in the losers bracket finals. This set up a grand finals rematch between OpTic and EnVyUs. The boys in blue got off to a hot start, defeating OpTic 2-0 in the first series of the “El Clasico” to give the Green Wall its first map losses of the weekend.
But OpTic bounced back, defeating EnVyUs 2-0 in the winner-take-all series to clinch the Atlantic City Open championship. Although this new lineup hasn’t been competing together for long, it seems like a slight roster change was all OpTic needed to reclaim their spot at the top of Gears of War esports.
The next stop on the Gears Pro Circuit will be the Gfinity Paris Open, which takes place May 5 to 7.
