In the week before the Six Jönköping Major began, Brazil’s Challenger League equivalent tournament came to an end.
The tournament, which had included some of the biggest upcoming players in the region, concluded with three playoff games -- two best-of-three map semi-finals and a BO5 map grand-final. Here’s a recap of how the tournament concluded for the 2022 season.
Teams
An initial round robin group stage took place through September and October.
This ended with SuperNova winning the group with a 6-0-0-1 record. This organization had won the 2021 Serie B tournament, but lost their relegation match to Santos.
Four members have left since then, as Dotz and d4sh left to join Team oNe, while PpWs joined TropiCaos. Dudds, who previously played for INTZ, also moved to a coaching position and left DreeuZ as the lone player continuing on. He was joined by fredQx, who previously played for FURIA and INTZ, Ar7hr who finished second in the BR6b last year, and two new rookies, Gomess7 and Empttz.
SuperNova’s lone loss came on the opening play day, a 2-7 against Magic Squad. This team included three fresh players -- hatez, vitaking, and hashasky -- as well as Florio, who previously played on Team oNe Academy, and Hornetao, who played for Black Dragons and INTZ after previously winning the ESL Challenger League in Season 10.
Meanwhile, Dromedalho had lost to just the two teams mentioned previously and finished in third place. The roster has a fairly small prior competitive history at this level, but their adopted name has a long history in Brazilian tier-two Siege with other lineups.
Finally, Electrify Steel only qualified for the top four on the final day thanks to a close win over the new Team oNe Academy roster. This team include LENDA and WiLL, who also won Challenger League Season 10 together before competing under the Elevate and Singularity banners in the ESL Pro League. LENDA then also was a part of one of the early FURIA iterations.
- SuperNova Team -- dreeuz, fredQx, Ar7hr, Gomess7, and Empttz
- Magic Squad -- hornetao, Florio, hashasky, vitaking, and hatez
- Dromedalho -- QuinTella, deffalt1, Felps, Dodez, and Flastry
- Electrify Steel Gaming -- WiLL, LENDA, stemp, Highlander, and norks
Electrify Steel Gaming vs SuperNova Team
As the group winners, the 2021 winning organization, and with more ex-professional players than any of their rivals, SuperNova were definitely favourites in this game.
Initially, SuperNova took the lead while defending on Clubhouse. Three triple kills across the first half put them ahead in a 4-2. As they started attacking, though, they completely lost their mojo and stuggled to get any foothold. It took to round 11 for any individual player to get more than one kill, as a triple on entry from EmptzZ won them a fifth round, but they quickly lost the map in the subsequent round.
As things moved onto Bank, SuperNova’s offensive struggles continued as they lost the first clutch situation of the match when stemp impressively won a 1v2 on Azami. Five rounds later, ESG repeated a 5-1 defensive half once again thanks to a quadruple kill from stemp.
But the defence favoured SuperNova once more, although only narrowly. FredQx won a 1v2 on round eight, Gomess7 won a 1v3 on round nine, and EmptzZ won a 1v2 on round 10. As such, these three rounds meant that they would complete a recovery from 1-5 at the half to 5-5.
Unfortunately, this was the end of the line for their successes. While the defenders got the opening two kills on round 11, they then suffered 10 deaths in a row, losing the map 5-7 and the series, 2-0. Electrify Steel Gaming made it to the grand-final.
Magic Squad vs Dromedalho
The second game was much less of a contest and warning bells were going off immediately, with hsk earning a quadruple kill on the very first round.
Dromedalho only won two total rounds on Kafe as a result, with Magic Squad easily the dominant team. Round three saw a triple kill from Felpxs while round five was won by QuinTella’s quadruple kill, but the Dromedalho players were otherwise kept very quiet.
As things moved onto Bank, even individual plays were not enough at times. Four Magic Squad triple kills in a row each gave them round wins, while a triple kill from Felpxs on round five still wasn’t enough to get on the board as none of his teammates added to his total.
Dromedalho won their first and only round of the map when Felpxs was able to upgrade his multi-kill to a quad-kill.
The game ended with Florio on 16 kills to five deaths, as he earnt the same SiegeGG Rating as hatez -- a 1.37. The best figure Dromedalho earned was a 0.90 figure for the team’s Thermite-main.
Grand-final
This sets up a Magic Squad versus Electrify Steel Gaming grand-final for the Challenger League title.
In contrast to the prior day’s results, the grand final was very close.
The very first map came down to a 8-7 result. ESG looked more impressive for most of the rounds, but Magic Squad had the pure fragging ability.
Magic Squad pushed the game to overtime only thanks to a 1v1 by hsk over WiLL, while VITAKING won a 1v2 in overtime. The game came to an end thanks to a team effort, though, as hsk and Hornetao earned the opening two kills, while VITAKING earned a double kill to end the round.
The following map saw domination by ESG over Magic Squad as a 7-2 scoreline tied the series up.
While that map included no major clutches, comebacks, or multi-kills, map three definitely did.
Oregon included 1v3s from WiLL and Florio, while Florio also managed a 1v2 triple kill on the final round to win the game. This was one of three triples from Florio, while Hornetao managed a quad-kill in round one and stemp won a 1v1 in round three that eventually put Magic Squad back in the lead wtih a 5-7.
Finally, in a somewhat anticlimactic finale, another 2-7 went Magic Squad’s way. ESG’s star player and the top player by SiegeGG Rating (1.32) in the series was once again stemp, as he earned 48 kills, the joint-14th most in any best-of-five despite only four maps being played.
Magic Squad’s 3-1 win meant they won the Brazilian Serie B Challenger League tournament. While this won’t offer a relegation or BR6 spot, it is likely multiple members of this roster will be picked up by professional teams over the next few months. For the players that remain, Magic Squad has also won an unspecified “advantage” in 2023.
It had a clutch, turning map, quiet map. He had EVERYTHING in the victory of @magicsquad_gg THE GREAT CHAMPION OF #BR6B 2022