MSI Day 5: On to Playoffs!

MSI Day 5 was all about determining the final scores of each region to see who's heading into Playoffs and earning a Top 4 Worlds seed. As only four teams could advance, we sadly had to wave goodbye to Turkey's SuperMassive and Europe's G2 Esports. Read on to find out more about the teams and stay tuned to Lolesports for more on MSI 2016.

How Turkey’s SuperMassive won our hearts

Turkey's SuperMassive may have been the first team to bow out of the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational, but their impact on the tournament, and our audience, will last long after the curtain call here in Shanghai.

Even the Chinese audience cheered that little bit louder when the underdogs took to the stage, provided they weren’t playing against China’s own Royal Never Give Up. Everyone was eager to see what this freshman team with nothing to lose could prove against the the regional giants that towered over them.

SuperMassive's 1-9 results may not look good on paper -- but anyone watching their games would have seen a competitive team taking kills, pressing advantages, and proving that on a mechanical level they could compete with the best teams in the world.

The only thing that seemed to hamstring them was some poor decision making, but that’s something to be expected for team that’s only been playing together for five months. For SuperMassive’s ADC Achuu, it’s all a learning process.

“I think the biggest gap in this tournament for us was our team play. It shows that we're a new team, only five months old," Achuu says. "So it's kind of hard for us to compete with the teams that are one, two, three years old like SKTelecom and CLG. They've been around a long time and have a lot of experience.”

For such a young team, they showed staggering improvement throughout MSI 2016 and even managed to take a thoroughly convincing win off North America's Counter Logic Gaming. During that game, the world saw why Dumbledoge should have Bard permabanned against him and how Achuu himself is a phenomenally gifted ADC -- especially for someone who only started playing professionally five months ago.

“I became a pro five months ago. And I've slowly but surely improved my skill and mechanics throughout the Split," Achuu explains, going on to admit that he's had a "pretty good" tournament here at MSI.  "My KDA's not so good, but at least I pulled off some good CS numbers and damage output during the games. So I'm fairly happy with my performance here.”

“I even took down CLG's MVP [Stixxay] quite convincingly in our first match, so hopefully they'll remember me in NA!”

SuperMassive have represented themselves, and Turkey, with pride. They took their defeats with grace and their victories with humility. They knew the odds were against them, but still stepped onto the stage here in Shanghai with confidence and smiles on their faces. They’re slowly changing what it means to be a Wildcard team -- so that next time they step out on the international stage (and there will be a next time) they’ll be looked at with the respect they earned here in Shanghai.

“Even though we lost a lot of games, I don't really get frustrated about it," says Achuu. "I'm always leaving the stage with a smile, every time. I think it's a great experience, especially since even five months ago, I was the one watching this type of thing. Now I'm playing against them!”

Achuu continued, “I think for Worlds, or next year, if we stick as a team, we'll put up even a better fight than we did already.”

You can keep following the MSI journey here at Lolesports and show Turkey some love on Twitter with #MSI2016.

The regions with the Top 4 seeds at Worlds 2016 are...

With the end of the Round Robin here at the 2016 Mid-Season Invitational, four regions have now locked in a top four seed at Worlds 2016. Congratulations to the teams, who will also move onto the Semifinals of MSI 2016 and fight to be crowned as champions here in Shanghai.

In the end this is how it played out. Yes, we’re just as surprised as you are.

• 1st Seed - China's Royal Never Give Up
• 2nd Seed - North America's Counter Logic Gaming
• 3rd Seed - LMS' Flash Wolves
• 4th Seed - Korea's SKTelecom T1

You can read more about the implications that MSI 2016 has on Worlds 2016 here.