Europe RMR A round 5 matches set; illogical use of Legends Stage decider seeding comes under fire

FaZe vs. MOUZ headlines the final round of play in the BLAST.tv Europe RMR A tournament.

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Update: Explanation never comes, deciding match goes ahead as originally announced

That announcement from BLAST never came and the match between GamerLegion and Bad News Eagles for the Legends Stage spot has started.

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Update 21:30 : BLAST is due to make an announcement regarding the seeding of the Legends Stage decider later tonight, HLTV.org has learned.

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Matchups of the fifth round at the European RMR have been set following the conclusion of round four, which saw FaZe, B8, and Falcons drop to the 2-2 pool after losing the qualification matches and OG, Apeks, and MOUZ join them after surviving elimination bouts.

The final round will pit the aforementioned six teams up against one another in pairs for direct qualification for the BLAST.tv Paris Major Challengers Stage.

The losing teams of the fifth will have one more shot at making it to Paris through the last chance qualifier, where they will join the 2-3 teams from the B tournament in a battle between six teams for Europe's 17th spot at the Major.

In a match of the day, FaZe will face off against MOUZ in Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's team's third opportunity to qualify for Paris after they lost 0-2 series to Natus Vincere and Bad News Eagles in their previous attempts.

Below are the round five matches:

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Europe RMR A
09/04/2023	Falcons 11:00 OG	Match
09/04/2023	FaZe 13:15 MOUZ	Match
09/04/2023	Apeks 14:20 B8	Match

Another match will be played between two of the three 3-1 teams to decide which one gets to skip the Challengers Stage. The organizers announced that GamerLegion would play the match against Bad News Eagles, a selection that has come under fire over the illogical use of the seeding system that affects that decision.

There are three teams who finished 3-1 in the Swiss group, but with four Legends Stage up for grabs in the first European RMR only two of the three 3-1 teams can earn that berth. The Buchholz score (the sum of scores of a team's opponents) is used to determine which of the three teams has the highest seed and advances straight to the Legends Stage, while the lower two seeds fight it out for the other spot. However, instead of waiting for round five matchups to finish and the Buchholz scores to determine final seeding, the organizers used results after the fourth round.

This has resulted in Into the Breach getting the automatic Legends Stage spot despite the fact that GamerLegion could still finish above them in the seeding if B8 win their 2-2 match.

The same situation occurred back in the IEM Rio European RMRs, where the organizers also used seeding after round four instead of waiting for round five despite the fact that the seeding could still be affected by the final results.

Date	Matches
BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Europe RMR A
09/04/2023	Bad News Eagles 11:00 GamerLegion	Match