The 2018/2019 season of the BR6 league kicked off last September halfway through Season 8 of the Pro League and has since seen a number of changes to both the rosters involved as well the rules such as the map and operator pools. Now, as we approach its conclusion this Friday to Sunday, here’s everything you need to know before one of the biggest LAN events of the year:
The Regular Season
The season kicked off last September with a double round-robin best-of-two map tournament with the teams that back then made up the Pro League. This means every Sunday since, we’ve seen four maps be played on a complete LAN environment between Pro League teams in what is undoubtedly the best national tournament in the world.
The BR6 Regular Season venue via @Rainbow6br’s flickr
While FaZe Clan stole a lot of the spotlight initially as they ran undefeated for the first six of fourteen weeks, Team Liquid proved they were the team to beat as they overtook FaZe at the beginning of 2019. Since then, it was virtually assured that FaZe and Liquid would be attending the Finals, but there was still a fight to join them ongoing between Ninjas in Pyjamas, Black Dragons, Immortals, and INTZ e-Sports.
The LATAM region continued its tradition of ridiculously close leagues, with the BR6 Finals spots coming down to the final round of games of NiP vs Liquid and BD vs FaZe. Both the teams in question managed to get the points they needed, however, to escape the possibility of a four-way tie as BD drew both maps against FaZe to earn one point while a 7-0 victory over Liquid earnt NiP the two points they needed to leap to third place.
The end of season BR6 standings via @rainbow6br
PTS = Points. J = Games Played. SM = Map Difference. MV = Maps Won. SR = Round Difference. RV = Rounds Won
Finally, we had the relegations as the final play day of the season decided that ReD DevilS would drop to the Series B for the 2020 season and be automatically replaced by Team oNe e-Sports while paiN Gaming fell in their relegation matchup against Guidance Gaming to introduce a number of fresh faces to the league led by the ex-Pro League player for Black Dragons, Rodrigo "rdz" Santos.
The Finals
The BR6 2019 title winners will be crowned on Sunday as FaZe Clan hope to make themselves champions for the third year running. Before they have the chance to do this, though, they will have to play in the ladder playoffs to make it there. This format of playoffs, as shown below, pits the third and fourth-seeded teams -- NiP and BD -- against each other, with the winner playing seed number two, FaZe, and the winner of that meeting the top seed of Team Liquid in the grand final.
The finals format via @Rainbow6br
These games will be played under the following schedule in BRT (UTC-3):
- Friday at 18:30 - Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Black Dragons: Best-of-Three maps
- Saturday at 18:30 - FaZe Clan vs Winner of Round 1: Best-of-Three maps
- Sunday at 17:15 - Team Liquid vs Winner of Round 2: Best-of-Five maps
Last year, FaZe Clan took the title by defeating Ninjas in Pyjamas (then playing as Black Dragons) in the grand-finals after three one-sided maps of 6-4, 2-6, 6-2. This kicked off what was an unprecedented 18-game win streak against other Pro League teams for the FaZe roster and only ended against G2 Esports at the Season 9 Pro League Finals. With the Six Major coming up, and FaZe and NiP both attending, FaZe would love a repeat of this performance. Team Liquid, on the other hand, will see this as their best and possibly only chance this year to win some silverware.
FaZe Clan lifting their trophy last year via @Rainbow6br
The games will be cast by the usual casters of André "meligeni" Santos, Otávio "Retalha" Ceschi, Ricardo “qeP” Fugi, and Guilherme “GuizaO” Kemen, with Guilherme “Guille” Scalfi on the analyst desk and Nyvi Estephan hosting as she did at the Season 9 Pro League Finals in Rio.
The Event
As it did last year, the event is taking place at the GameXP event -- the largest gaming event in Latin America -- with the BR6 games being played on the largest screen in the world.
Last year’s BR6 Finals via @Rainbow6br’s flickr
The event last year attracted 90,000 people which is likely to have seen a dramatic increase as people come to experience what is effectively a theme park centred around gaming, with the event area expanded by almost 60% to include three Olympic arenas this time around.
The map for the event via @esportv
Concerning R6, as well as the BR6 Finals, the event will also feature a showmatch between a number of players, talent and streamers such as the ex-Team Liquid captain of Leo "ziGueira" Duarte, the caster of Retalha, the Immortals player of José "Bullet1" Victor and the huge Brazilian Twitch streamer of The Darkness.
The showmatch lineup via @Rainbow6br
Thursday will also see the grand final of the BR University Championship play out between Anhembi Morumbi University and Universidade Positivo in what is an exciting time to be a Latin American Rainbow Six player.
The event schedule at GameXP via @Rainbow6br
Finally, the GameXP event will also be hosting latest Finals in the Female Circuit 2019 tournament as the top women's teams fight it out on Friday and Saturday following an open qualifier last month. The favourites for this event is the newly acquired Black Dragons Female roster who will be aiming to defend their GameXP 2018 title this year.
The main contenders to them will be the Resilience e-Sports Club lineup who qualified for the later cancelled DreamHack Rio event and INTZ e-Sports Club’s female roster who’s core ended as runners up last year. Finally, we have the Team Brave Soldiers lineup who has ended just outside of the limelight in a number of events and will be wanting to finally get a win before the $5k Queen of Hearts women's tournament later this year.
“There are more than 100 professionals (not all of them in the photo, of course) who, along with the clubs and athletes, in the last 12 months have made the Brasileirão Rainbow Six 2019 the first year-long esports championship ever held in Brazil”
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Tickets for the finals can be found here for as little as R$25 (US$6) while the games themselves will be streamed on the rainbow6br Twitch account. Keep an eye out here at SiegeGG for results of the Finals, as well as announcements on the 2020 season of the BR6 which will kick off after the Six Major.