With London Spitfire having won the Overwatch League, we turn now towards the impending Overwatch World Cup.
George Moncaster takes a closer look at the United Kingdom’s roster and some of the players competing for the nation.
The third Overwatch World Cup is well on its way, with the host of teams finalising rosters.
The Cup is as one might expect, a collection of the worlds best talent, organised into teams based on nationality for a shot at the $488,000 prize pool.
As with most World Cup formats across sports and esports, each team will first compete in a region qualifier, before progressively knocking each other out.
Previously, South Korea have taken home the first place spot in both the 2016 and 2o17 Overwatch World Cups, with the United Kingdom failing to qualify in 2016, and then placing 5th in 2017.
Looking to make progress and improve from last year, the team have released a roster on their official Twitter, jam packed with with all sorts of top tier talent from across the Overwatch community.
WE HAVE OUR 7 LIONS
And just to reiterate
I T ‘ S C O M I N G H O M E#lanimals pic.twitter.com/CvRxnWCxtW
— Team UK Overwatch (@7LionsOW) July 6, 2018
Blizzard is covering flights and accomodation for seven players in each team, so Team UK will likely be sending seven to the event. The tweet above mentions Smex, ChrisTFer, Kyb, MikeyA, KSP, Boombox and Kruise as the 7 Lions, however there are more waiting in the wings just in case.
The full roster, according to the 7 Lions website, includes ChrisTFer, Fusions and numlocked as main tanks, with Smex and Moursi as off-tanks. Following them up in projectile DPS is Kyb, Jellis, Zeal and Zerggy, with hitscan DPS as KSP, MikeyA, Dids and Jbeans.
Last but not least, the team’s supports are Boombox, Daiya, Kruise and FunnyAstro.
The team draws in players from both Overwatch Contenders and the Overwatch League, as well as independent players. It includes a host of support staff also, with well-known Overwatch Youtuber Stylosa on board as general manager.
The group stages are set to take place in Paris from September 21st.
The UK are in a group with Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy and France.
You can stay up to date with the tournament by following the Overwatch World Cup website.
There’s also a good interview with Team UK here, and even Overwatch dev Jeff Kaplan has shown his ‘support’ for the 7 Lions. How can we lose?
George has been writing general content for about two years now, and is now branching out into gaming and esports. He also runs a Twitch and YouTube channel and is currently at university.
"My first pieces were published on my stream network site TheBNN who have a small blog that's quite general," George said. "It was initially Overwatch mechanics and updates, but has begun to spread into other areas and other games.
"I also used to do a little remote casting for amateur CSGO teams, which I still do on rare occasion for a few orgs through Broadcast.gg. I'd really like to get some on camera experience with esports, and hope to cover content at LAN events or even end up hosting desks."
