osu!taiko World Cup - Quarterfinals Recap

The osu!taiko World Cup 2018 is well underway as the best of the best face off among themselves for the title of Champion! Missed the matches? Join Eiuh in this handy recap of the Group Stage and Round of 16 to catch up!

Hi, I'm Eiuh and I'll be writing the recaps for the osu!taiko World Cup this year. Let's start off by going over the Group Stage and Round Of 16 to give you some background to the Quarterfinals. Better late than never, right?

Because of so many Group Stage matches being blowouts, I'll focus heavily on a select few matches, including upsets that caused crucial changes to the elimination bracket.

Group Stage Matches

The Group Stage started off with Australia setting the tone for the weekend. In spite of Finland putting up a valiant fight and winning a point, they were beaten convincingly just like the other low seeded teams would be.

After a few more matches, United Kingdom came out swinging against France. In fact, they swang hard enough to find themselves on match point with the opportunity to clinch the game 4-2 over the French. Unfortunately for the brits, France pulled themselves together to come back and win on tiebreaker. The fierce battle between the powerhouses goheegy and TimmyAkmed was a delight to watch, but the upsets would have to wait until later.

The nocturnal matches (UTC time) both resulted in upsets. Chile and South Korea showed a dominant performance against the top seeds Australia and Brazil respectively, only losing 1 map each. Going into the Round Of 16, this put Chile and South Korea in even, winnable matchups while Australia and Brazil had tough teams ahead: Taiwan and USA.

The third and final upset of the weekend, Spain versus Indonesia, was a real thriller. After trading close points with each other for 6 maps, the two teams ended up on tiebreaker where Spain clutched out the victory.

For the Round Of 16, this meant that Indonesia would face their fellow top seed France while Spain faced the United Kingdom. Both of those were rematches from last year where France and Spain came out on top, so revenge-driven performances from Indonesia and United Kingdom were to be expected.

Group Stage Mappool

The nomod picks were the clear favourites for the teams in Groups this year. One of the most picked maps was Firce777's classic memorization map Yuitsuki yukari - Shiawase ni nareru kakushi komando ga aru rashii, which is a type of map that has not been too popular historically. Instead, the outlier in nomod was the accuracy map Chroma - Collapse which surprisingly only got picked twice.

The rejection of accuracy maps in this stage was made even more apparent by the bans. The OD7 Hidden map Ice - Entrance and the long DoubleTime pick FELT - Day After combined made up almost half of all Group Stage bans.

A word on the picks/bans by Nwolf, one of the map selectors:

In Group Stage picks and bans mostly went as expected. We were surprised by the huge amount of picks on Shiawase and Goin' Under which we thought would be banned (and Caramel Custard which we thought would get ignored a bit more because it's technical and risky), and the high amount of bans on Entrance, which we considered the easier HD map.

Round Of 16 Matches

Unlike in the Group Stage, the Round Of 16 didn't give us any close scorelines. The 2nd place teams unfortunately only managed to steal 3 points in total from the group winners.

Remember those upsets I mentioned? Brazil's loss to South Korea in the Group Stage meant they faced the titans that are the United States. The Brazilians were a couple players short and couldn't get a point on the board against the ruthless accuracies from the US.

Canada made quick work of Malaysia with a 5-0 victory, and Taiwan did the same against top-seeded Australia, forcing the Maustraysian duo into the losers bracket along with Brazil.

Things got really interesting in the match between France and Indonesia. The losses of France usually came down to a single misplay, and they eventually took a point on the FreeMod t+pazolite - Elder Dragon Legend (ft. Kabocha) despite the 2 mod advantage of Indonesia. Overall though, Indonesia will take their revenge on France 5-1, the same score they lost by last year.

Only one Argentinian player made it to their match, resulting in a win by default for Japan.

South Korea edged out Poland on every match they played, but that didn't stop CreepyDuck from pulling off this crazy score on Viden:

Hong Kong missing one of their three players put them in a tough spot against Chile with no replacements. The accuracy monster sing216 lived up to their reputation by getting 5 scores above 99,9%, 3 of which were SS ranks. The other Hong Kong player, Faputa, couldn't quite match that but still exceeded the expectations of many and helped put Hong Kong on the board. It ended 5-1 in favour of the Chileans.

The last match of the day was also arguably the most even one, United Kingdom vs Spain. This one could have been significantly closer, but with the small score differences all going the way of Spain, they clinched the match 5-1. However, United Kingdom still proved themselves as a dedicated team on the memorization map Black Hole - Pluto:

Round Of 16 Mappool

The picks in Round Of 16 were evenly spread out, more so than in the Group Stage anyway. Across 7 matches, every map was played at least once except for tiebreaker. Teams kept it simple by banning out technical maps a lot, such as onoken - Viden (Hidden) and Virt - Staring at my Spaceship (HardRock).

Quarterfinals Matches

The Quarterfinals stage marked the end of the journeys of 4 teams in the Taiko World Cup. Those being Argentina, Malaysia, United Kingdom and France. Better luck to them next year!

Hong Kong kicked off Saturday by sweeping Argentina 5-0. Argentina did arrive with enough players this time, but their star player Midnaait unfortunately was not one of them.

The match between Poland and France seemed like an even one when the teams traded wins until 2-2. At that point, Poland had enough. With CreepyDuck leading the way, Poland won the last 3 maps to cause a 5-2 upset against the top-seeded French.

The United Kingdom were missing a couple key players, which Brazil took full advantage of and swept the UK 5-0.

Spain versus United States is another match where the teams looked balanced early on, but the US ran away with the game to win 5-1. Spain edged out the win on the speedy nomod pick LeaF - I to equalize the score at 1-1. Other than that, the US dominated every map in style and set some jaw-dropping scores while doing so. Dargin intimidated Spain right away with an amazing accuracy of only three 100s on the DoubleTime map M2U - Masquerade. Later in the match, JDrago14 displayed their amazing reading skills by getting a full combo on the Hidden map CHON - Perfect Pillow. This also happened:

For the first match on Sunday, Australia swiftly eliminated their northern neighbours Malaysia 5-0.

South Korea started out strong against Indonesia, taking the first three maps. Indonesia then attempted a comeback and took two maps of their own, but it wasn't meant to be as South Korea closed out the game 5-2. A very impressive upset from the mid seeded Koreans, to say the least.

The anticipated Japanese team was streamed for the first time in their match against Chile. While Japan won the match 5-1, the Chileans should still be proud of taking a point, as that is something few teams could manage against the favourite team of the tournament.

The last match of this stage was Taiwan versus Canada is the winners bracket. There is some rivalry to this matchup, as Canada fell short on the tiebreaker against Taiwan back in the 2016 Finals stage. This time Taiwan had a much easier time, clinching the game with a 5-0 sweep. If Canada wants the silver medal this year, the mountain they have to climb to obtain it is even steeper than previous years.

Quarterfinals Mappool

In the Quarterfinals we saw every map get played atleast twice except for the tiebreaker and U-F SEQUENCER - EupHolic (FreeMod) which didn't get picked at all. This map was also the most targeted ban along with CHON - Perfect Pillow (Hidden). Some thoughts from one of the map selectors, mangomizer, regarding the Quarterfinals mappool:

"We were pleasantly surprised by the spread of picks - it seems that the players coped well with most of the niches we set for this stage. I didn't expect Jikininki (the longest map) to be the most popular pick (6/8 matches), nor did I expect Eupholic to not be picked at all.

It's slightly disappointing to have a tiebreaker drought for the second week in a row, though at the very least every other map received some attention. Player feedback and comments have been extremely helpful, and we look forward to putting that to good use in shaping the future pools!"

Semifinals Preview

The tiebreaker drought is indeed real, but these upcoming matches are looking likely to break that trend. In the winners bracket, mid-seeded South Korea will challenge Japan while Taiwan and United States play a rematch from last year. In the losers bracket, we'll be seeing another rematch from last year between Australia and Chile, along with Canada versus Hong Kong, Brazil versus Indonesia and a European brawl between Spain and Poland. Finally, two more matches that are dependant on the other losers bracket results will take place. To learn more, you can find the schedule, bracket and other info on the wiki page.

Useful Links

This is surely shaping up to be an exciting Semifinals stage, and you can watch it all go down this weekend at the osulive twitch channel. The first match starts 13:30UTC on Saturday. While you're there, you can also rewatch past matches. If you're into stats, you'll find various ones compiled by deadbeat and Nwolf by clicking here.

Also, don't forget to buy a banner! You can support your favourite team by purchasing a banner at the osu!store. By doing so, you contribute to the tournament prize pool.

Feedback is always greatly appreciated, so feel free to provide some in the comments below or by PM. See you next week!

—Eiuh