175 players from 21 countries, lots of big names, the one and only Milton. Ownage season 3 has truly begun.

The bracket is up, and things are getting started. Round 1 is currently underway, 48 players will have to fight for their spot on the first full round including the top 128 players.

Next week (or this week if people start playing early) the round of 128 starts and we are already going to see some great games.

goblin vs. Zepp

Zepp aka. Murk made a real impression on previous Ownage. His victories included: Hyrveli, meshuggah, Chmielu, dropking, bps and Rikoll. That's a long list of solid duelers. So who stopped his run and knocked him out of winner's bracket? That's right, it was goblin. Their last encounter included one sided aerowalk and dm6 games for Zepp and goblin respectively and a tight dm2 decider. I do expect the same result on the same two first maps. The decider though is a different story, maybe one of them is confident enough to drop dm2 and we'll see ztndm3 or dm4 as the final map instead. It is a shame that two such a high caliber players ended up facing each other so early, but I will surely enjoy the show.

murdoc vs. moltas

Here we have another two solid players facing of at the very beginning. Neither of these players is really known for their duel skills, but trust me they can play. Looking at their runs on season 2 (murdoc, moltas) murdoc is a clear favourite with his wins over spoink, tom and riker, but I'm sure moltas will not let him advance easily.

kingpin vs. niw

The third big match of this round is the aerowalk guy vs. the old school dane. The match seems to be destined towards dm2 decider, since both players should be able take down their own map quite easily. Who will take down dm2? It's impossible to say, but one player will be very disappointed going down to lower bracket so early. Be sure to check out Zalon's interviews with both of these players.

Other games

Those are the three big games for round of 128, but of course there are a lot more. I'm especially looking forward to xtje vs. bent, bandit vs. Irvin, Zerficker vs. LuGia / riosatiy and xpr vs. Hyrveli / Tempo. I'm not familiar with all of the 175 players, especially the Russian and Polish ones, so let me know if there are other exciting games coming up that I have totally missed.

Hopefully everyone from the noobiest of noobs to Milton himself will advertise their matches with .qw messages when they are starting.