With a massive $20,000 split between EU and NA, this season’s prize pool sees a two-fold rise in NA, and a ten-fold rise in EU. It is clear that CCS is aiming to attract the best, for its increased prize pool even doubles that of last season’s Challenger League.
Each region will have eight teams participating, including the champion and runners-up from Season Three for each region, as well as six new teams per region sourced from two qualifiers each.
The qualifiers will be held as follows:
NA Qual #1: November 11th starting at 13:00 EST
NA Qual #2: November 17th starting at 13:00 EST
EU Qual #1: November 10th starting at 13:00 CET
EU Qual #2: November 18th starting at 13:00 CET
With the new season come new rules, starting with a change to the age restrictions. Players must be sixteen years old or older to participate in competition. In another welcome rule change, all matches will be a Best-of-Two (Bo2). A win on both maps will yield three points, a split of the maps will see one point awarded to both teams, while a loss of both maps will result in zero points gained.
Furthermore, the maps will follow the seven-map ESL pool, but will also be subject to change via community feedback, and the site rotation will switch to two in order to more closely resemble ESL’s system. Each team will play every other participant once in a single round-robin system, and the top four teams at the end of the regular season will enter a playoff to crown the champion.
The season will run from December until just before the Six Invitational, and games will be played on Mondays and Wednesdays for EU, and Wednesdays and Fridays for NA.
The production has also received a boost, with casters such as Flynn, Stoax, and Azaraki will lending their voices to the NA league, while casters AceofPyrite, Xrtroika, and Sternab will cast EU. Panky will not be continuing on, and each region will see a fourth caster added to the team before the start of the season.
With this new season, improved production, and new rulebook, CCS continues to pursue its mission to reinvest in improving themselves in order to help the Rainbow Six community, and provide a strong alternative to the ESL run leagues.