Europe's Challenger League season came to an end on Friday with the playoffs kicking off tonight. The top two teams from this tournament will progress to a grand-final taking place at the EU Finals in December followed quickly by a relegation matchup against Rogue. Here's a look at how the league currently stands and a preview of the possible relegation matches coming up next month:
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EU Challenger League Playoffs
The qualifiers for this season's Challenger League kicked off all the way back in February with the start of the Spain Nationals season. Since then, the top teams across nine national leagues joined the top two teams from Season 11's Challenger League and the winner of an Open Qualifier to create a 12 team league.
These teams were then split into two groups of six, which have spent the five Fridays since competing in a best-of-one round-robin tournament, with the top four in each group progressing to tonights's playoffs.
The 12 teams split into their two groups. (Image: ESIX)
Group A
Group A wa,s without a doubt, the most competitive, with it inviting the ex-CL team of GAMMA (previously known as Trust Gaming, LowLandLions, and Defusekids), and the top applicable teams from the Russian Major League, Spain Nationals, Nordic Championship, PG Italian Nationals, and GSA League.
Play Day 1 showed how tight it would be with all three games going to 12 rounds before a three-way tie for first appeared after playday two. The group deciding game eventually came on playday four between GAMMA and Winstrike in which the Russian representative won 7-4. This somewhat surprise win put WS in a clear lead and made them pretty strong tournament favorites going forward.
The statistics for this matchup.
With Winstrike and GAMMA locked in, the final two playoff spots came down between Heretics, MACKO, and ForeignFive which was decided on the final play day. While Heretics did manage to secure a draw against Winstrike, they were still in a somewhat precarious position which was solved the following map, as ForeignFive lost to Granit Gaming, ruling them out of contention and locking both Heretics and MACKO in for the playoffs.
- Winstrike Team -- SmashByAsh, Leri, flaers0, eXoduSS, rush and VIKING (coach)
- GAMMA GAMING -- Leonski, Avaiche, Deapek, Panix, ASTRO, Sternab (coach) and Phenomene (analyst)
- Team Heretics -- Baroz, Sakke, JuK4, Kuriboh, Iluzjonist and Noel (coach)
- MACKO Esports -- SirBoss, T3b, Alation, J3n4, Keenan, Px7 (coach) and Volteli (analyst)
Group B
Group B was very different to A, as the top four teams locked in their Playoffs spots by week four while the French and Benelux representatives of BeKind and Black Mamba failed to get a single point other than against each other. Between the top four, it was a pretty close race throughout with a point separating each position with just a single play day to go.
The key games here saw PENTA take down the Polish team of the Izako Boars (now known as Homeless) on Play Day 1 in an impressive 7-2 scoreline, which gave them the lead throughout most of the season up until the final play day. Here, PENTA's draw to Cowana allowed MnM to tie them on points, with MnM taking first place based on round difference, +16 to +13.
- MnM Gaming -- Jonka, Nathan, Yuzus, Dats, Fonkers and Sparxo (coach)
- PENTA -- ENEMY, RevaN, BlaZ, Kaktus, Alive and BiOs (coach)
- Homeless -- Ryba, Royal, Foster, AueR, Mekses and Bugs (coach)
- Cowana Gaming -- Anarchic, Grizzly, GorgoNa, Kayak, Sloth, Mrofficer88 (coach) and davil (analyst)
The final group standings. (Image: ESIX)
Playoffs
Two quarter-finals will take place tonight, followed by two on Wednesday, before the semi-finals a week after today. Following this, we'll have the top two teams which will progress to the grand-finals at the European Finals in December.
These games will be cast by the usual names on the main rainbow6 channel as we've seen each week for the Challenger League. With two best-of-threes per Monday and Wednesday, this will be a temporary return to the old Pro League format and one of a very small number of BO3 these teams would have played this year.
The playoffs for Europe's Challenger League.
While any of these eight teams have a good shot in winning their quarter-final, the favourites will likely be Winstrike, PENTA, MnM, and GAMMA which would make a rather interesting rematch between MnM and GAMMA after these teams share six players from the following controversy in Season 11:
Relegation Fight
The winner of this Challenger League grand-final will be automatically promoted to the 2021 EU League to replace Chaos Esports Club, while the runner-up will face Rogue for their spot the same weekend. Here's a short roundup of the two teams in question:
Rogue
Previously known as Giants Gaming, LFO, LeStream, and Millenium, this team dates back all the way to Season 4 with the then fully francophone roster qualifying for both the Season 5 and 7 Finals and won the DreamHack Austin Minor. Following this, they picked up the German player of AceeZ and transitioned to English comms with UUNO and korey following behind, making it a European rather than French team by November 2018.
This new team qualified for both the 2019 Six Invitational as well as the Season 9 Finals -- finishing last in both -- before falling in the excruciatingly close Allied Minor grand-final against Team Secret 5-7, 8-7, 7-8. Another two first-round exits at the Season 10 Finals and 2020 Six Invitational cemented their rather unfortunate reputation of being unable to perform when it mattered.
AceeZ at the Season 10 Finals.
The now German majority team became the European champions for Season 11 after finishing runners-up the two seasons beforehand before retaining the title during stage one and exciting in the first round once again during the August Regional Major. As Stage 2 kicked-off, a three-game ban from AceeZ due to sharing insider information seemingly threw the team right off of their game, leading them to a last-place finish that stage, which meant a ninth-place overall finish.
Chaos Esports Club
Just like Rogue, Chaos can also trace its routes back to Season 4, when the roster then known as Playing Ducks qualified for the Pro League after winning its open qualifier. The team initially saw two Swedish players including Renuilz, two Brits (including meepeY), and the Dane of z1ronic compete, before it became a Swedish majority team in Season 5. After a fourth, fifth, and third-place finish for Seasons 4, 5, and 6, the failure to qualify for the 2018 Six Invitational led to an extremely messy split in the team as the Swedish players joined the Chaos organization and kept the Pro League spot while the Brits (which then included LeonGids who now plays for Rogue) requalified for the Pro League on "i don't know" (later known as Team Secret).
Since joining Chaos the team has finished the Pro League in sixth, sixth, fifth, sixth, and seventh and failed to qualify for a single international event. They were however invited to seven Minors, peaking at fourth place at both the Allied Minor and Valencia 2019 tournaments.
Following this bad run of form, the team removed two of the original members of the lineup in REDGROOVE and Secretly. However, this move didn't really help. Chaos won a total of three games against Vitality, Rogue, and Virtus.pro out of their 18 played, putting them in dead last, meaning after holding on for almost three years they have finally been relegated out of Europe's top flight.
Renuilz at DreamHack Valencia 2019.
Meet the Teams with CaptainFluke
In order to learn more about what to expect from the teams, we spoke to the current EU League, EU Challenger League, and APAC North caster of Em "CaptainFluke" Donaldson:
Firstly, can you introduce yourself?
CaptainFluke at the OGA PIT Minor last December.
Which players in EU CL have impressed you the most?
Which two teams do you think will make it to the grand-finals and why?
BeKind and Black Mamba both struggled a lot in group b, how well do you think they would have faired against the group a lineup of teams?
How would you judge Rogue's chances in their relegation battle?
Rogue (then known as Giants Gaming) at the Season 10 Finals in Tokoname, Japan.
How would you improve the EU CL tournament for 2021?
Check out the games on the R6Esports Twitch channel with full coverage here at SiegeGG!