With only four teams left in the first season of OGN's Overwatch APEX league, the first of its kind in the game, the community's eyes were on the first day of the semifinals to see who among the South Korean, European and North American teams would be taking one step closer to the ₩ 100,000,000 (USD$90,000) grand prize.
South Korean teams Afreeca Freecs Blue and BK Stars reconvened for the first semifinals best-of-five match, bringing both of their unique team strengths to war against one another. The format for choosing the maps in a set dictated that the second, fourth, and fifth maps were escort maps, in which BK Stars has a much better record in than Afreeca; this was proven on the second map, Numbani, where BK dominated. This meant that Afreeca's best path to victory would be to win the control and assault maps that are played on the first and third map of each set, then take one escort map away from BK.
So far in APEX, there haven't been many sets that came down to what types of maps were being played, with the exception of the group stage games from Europe's Rogue, which had seemingly mastered assault maps. This situation was uncommon because many teams were newly formed at the beginning of the season, especially coming from South Korea. By the time of this semifinal, however, it was clear to Afreeca that a win on a payload map was going to be an uphill struggle.
After AFB won both Nepal and Volskaya Industries, the fourth map was to be played on Watchpoint: Gibraltar, a payload map in BK Star's favor. Then, Afreeca Freecs Blue players Jeong "ArHaN" Wonhyuk and Cho "J1N" Hyojin played heroes that they didn't regularly play throughout the season and their gamble completely shut down the offense from BK Stars.
ArHaN played a beautiful D.Va, utilizing her defensive matrix to protect his teammates, while J1N both dismantled the offense with Roadhog hooks and also pierced through BK's defense when it was AFB's turn to push the payload. One play in particular involved J1N jumping off from the high ground while landing a hook on one of BK's players, dragging him all the way from the top to the lowest elevation for an easy isolated kill. After that Jung "Recry" Taekhyun distracted all six members of BK with his Hanzo while ArHaN snuck the payload unopposed up the hill on the underpass of Gibraltar for a 3-1 victory, taking them to the Grand Finals of APEX.