Spanish Masters 2018: Everything You Need to Know!

After a three month long online season consisting of a Best-of-two (Bo2) double round robin format, the top six teams have been invited to a LAN final at the Madrid Games Week event from the 19th to the 21st of October. Here, they will compete for their slice of the €20,000 prize pool and be crowned the best team in Spain -- a title currently held by “Vamoss” a team that consisted of Goga, baroz, Fabian, Pengu and p0Lo.

Who is Competing?

The LAN Finals have a rather unusual format which sees the top two seeded teams automatically qualify for a single elimination playoff to be joined by the winners of a GSL-style bracket containing seeds three to six.

This, therefore, means that six out of the eight teams that played in the online season have qualified for the LAN Final and still could win the grand prize, though the two top teams have an easier route to the title.

These standings above mean that the two teams to automatically qualify for the playoff stage are as follows:

Giants Gaming

Roster: DriD, LioN, baroz, sakke and vASS1LYY

Containing four out of five players from the ex-Pro League team of gBots PRO, this roster contains some of the most experienced and successful Spanish players in Siege history. LioN, DriD and baroz all played in the Season four semi-finals against Black Dragons and sakke played on gBots during Season 5, while vASS1LYY played with the majority of this roster during Season 7 of the Challenger League.

This team most recently showed their power at the Euro Cup 2018 in Milan, where they defeated the current Pro League team of PENTA Sports, and the eventual winners and Challenger League leaders of Team Empire before finishing in second place. They will go into this tournament as the clear favourites to all but a few people as they hope to take their first of many titles under their new organisation.

Movistar Riders

Roster: p0lo, Yami, chOi, Kaktus and LeGnO

Best known by their ex-player of Korey, now a Pro League player for Mock-it Esports, Movistar Riders also has a number of ex-Pros on their roster. Spaniard chOi was also a member of the gBots roster which reached the Season 4 semi-finals mentioned previously, while p0Lo played on both Barrage eSports in Season 4 and gBots PRO in Season 5 -- both of which were relegated.

Movistar Riders sat unbeaten in the league until the very last playday in which they lost in an unexpectedly dominant 6-4, 6-1 scoreline to Giants Gaming. Failing to get a point here meant they sat in a four-way tie between themselves, x6tence, Wizards Esports Club, and Dragons Esports Club in which they came out on top of thanks to their unbeaten head to head record against the other teams. As a result, they get the automatic spot in the semi-final.

While those two teams progress straight to the semi-finals, the remaining four teams will play in a group stage prior to this to decide who will join them. These teams are:

X6tence: weskeRR, Naigal7, Kuriboh, Indra and juK4

Wizards Esports Club: xP4TTO, SART3N, Therox, Scythe and Iluzjonist

Dragons Esports Club: Basily, Scorpion, Wispy, Curr3nSy and jwey

The G-Lab Addicts: BullRock, Critical, Jabbawockeez, Llywarth and Shelby

Dragons, x6tence, and G-Lab Addicts all previously competed off-stream in the DreamHack Valencia BYOC Open qualifier, with just x6tence making it through to the main event. There, x6tence took both Mock-it (now known as PENTA Sports) and i don’t know (now known as Team Secret) to overtime before losing both games 2-0. Wizards, meanwhile, defeated Trust Gaming, the reigning Benelux champions, just a few weeks ago in a show match in a somewhat surprising 2-0 scoreline.

When are the Games?

• The group stage kicks off on Friday, October 19th, at 11 AM CEST and will be played throughout the day back to back.
• The semi-finals will then take place on Saturday, October 20th, scheduled at 12 PM and 4 PM CEST.
• Finally, the Grand-Finals to crown the Spanish champions will be played on Sunday, October 21st, at 2 PM CEST.

Where Can You watch the Games?

The games will be broadcast in Spanish on the Rainbow6ES Twitch channel cast by Marc “R0SS” Rosés, Álex “AlexPolo_” Polo and Erik “MrXavito” Javier