Toronto KOI beat Gentle Mates to win Monster Invitational

Sunday's grand final was a best-of-7 across Hardpoint, Search and Hijack, and the strangest moment came early on, before Toronto had pulled away.

Breaking Point

@GGBreakingPoint

WTF!? WE GOT A TIE IN HIJACK 🤯 t.co/lOMlvrP4rt

A tie in Hijack. In the first meaningful event of a new season. The mode is brand new to most of the people watching, and it gave everyone a reason to argue about the rules before the series was even settled. Paris had beaten OpTic-level competition to get there, but they took only 1 map off Toronto, and KOI wrapped it up on map 5.

Ethan was the guy on the closer. He went 12-6 on the clinching map, a strong finish for a player who is new to the CDL spotlight. Kips was reportedly named grand final MVP, and the win capped a run of 5 straight series victories for KOI to open the year.

Breaking Point

@GGBreakingPoint

KOI WIN THE KICKOFF! 🥇 @Ethxnz_: 12-6 (Map 5) 🔥

Toronto's social team went for the throat as soon as it was over. All offseason the 'super team' talk was about other rosters, so KOI took the label for themselves. The $100,000 is the size of the whole prize pool, by the way. First place reportedly paid $32,000 and Paris took home $20,000 for second, so the roster posts flexing the 6 figures are rounding up a bit. Nobody's going to fault them for it on a night like this.

Toronto KOI

@TorontoKOI

WHO'S THE SUPER TEAM NOW?! WE ARE YOUR MONSTER INVITATIONAL CHAMPIONS 🏆 #TKOIWIN | @MonsterGaming

By Monday the scene had moved on to the usual question: what does a kickoff event actually tell you? Cloud9 New York finished 3rd and OpTic Texas 4th, while the big-name rosters that crashed out early spent the day getting picked apart on podcasts. On one side, it's 3 days in November on a brand-new game. On the other, KOI dropped just 3 maps across the whole event, and that's hard to write off as a fluke.

The 16-team field was a big part of why the weekend landed. Putting Challengers teams into the opening rounds meant some of the early matches carried real upset risk instead of being byes for the league teams, and that brought a scrappy energy the CDL's openers don't always have. One Challengers org came away calling it the best COD it has watched since it got started.

Telluride Bush Gaming

@tBushGaming

The Monster Invitational was the most competitive weekend of cod we’ve watched since starting the Bush and we hope it stays like that 🌳

For now, Toronto has the trophy and the bragging rights, and Paris and the rest of the field have a full slate of tape to study. The next question is whether KOI can do it again once the season's first Major arrives and every team has had more time on the game. If they're still dropping maps this rarely by then, the super team line won't be a joke anymore.