This series aims to highlight the best and most interesting games of all the lower leagues in competitive Siege, from the BR6 national league to the German Saturday League, to ensure that you don’t miss the best action going on at all levels of play.
ESL Benelux League: Season 3 - Conquer Gaming vs Flash Point Esports
Following the delay of last week’s games due to the suspension of claymores, Clash, and deployable shields, this week will see two Benelux League play days on Wednesday the 29th of May and Monday the third of June. That means we will have six games in the next week, the most interesting of which being Flash Point vs Conquer Gaming for a number of reasons.
Firstly, we have a matchup between the organisations. Last season, this Conquer Gaming roster was known as Flash Point Esports, meaning we have their old roster playing their new roster. This is interesting as the old Flash Point roster had quite a history of success in the Benelux League making it to the LAN Finals of both Seasons 1 and 2, and so this new roster was seen to have a lot to live up to -- this matchup is their chance to prove themselves better than their predecessors.
Secondly, we have their positions within the league at the moment -- these teams currently sit in joint third place with Os Leoes with just one victory each. Whichever team wins this game will jump from four to seven points and this could put them all the way up to second place, making them a very sudden competitor for the title. Furthermore, both Conquer and Flash Point only have one other game after this in the league and it’s against the undefeated Trust Gaming. It is fairly likely, therefore, that this is both teams’ last chance to gain some points and push themselves into a LAN position as we enter the final two weeks of competition.
The current Benelux standings after four of seven games via Liquipedia.
Another interesting game with LAN implications is next Monday’s matchup of ForeignFive vs Os Leoes. At the moment, these two teams sit in second and third place with losses only to Trust Gaming. The winner of this game will very likely end the season in second place and will probably make it to the eventual league grand-finals. While Os Leoes will be the favourites due to the inclusion of Kantoreketti and SlebbeN, they haven’t been playing for all their games, and they still lost against Trust with proffessional players on the roster, so they definitely aren’t unstoppable at their best.
The statistics between Os Leoes and Trust Gaming earlier this season.
Nordic Championship: Season 2 - Finals
While a much-diminished version of earlier Nordic Championship iterations, the Season 2 online finals will be this weekend as the Swedish Pro League roster of Chaos attempt to claim their second ever title. In order to do this, they will have to defeat the team that knocked them out of Season 1 while known as Meme Team -- LF Org. This mixed Nordic roster includes Spoit and Treik0 who, alongside Vitoline, won the King of Nordic tournament last year as well as m1loN, who’s been in a number of regional rosters including Epsilon eSports.
Also in attendance will be the second best team in Finland in the Challenger League roster of Team GoSkilla as they play in just their third ever tournament as a team. The roster’s star player of Otto "pannari" Heikkinen will be likely eager to regain his Nordic Championship title after losing it to “BK is Watching”, a lineup made up of G2 and Chaos players, in December 2017. The full list of teams in attendance are listed below:
The tournament’s Finals format consists of a simple best-of-one map online single-elimination bracket with the winners earning half the €2k prize pool and being crowned the Season 2 Nordic Champions. Games kick off on Sunday at around 1pm CEST with the best-of-three map grand-final scheduled for around 7:45pm CEST.
The Nordic Championship banner via @UbisoftNordic
ESL Premiership Summer 2019 - Aquila Esports vs MnM Gaming
The Summer Season of the ESL Premiership, the UK’s national league, began the week prior to the Milan finals with fairly little notice. The announcement that the teams of MnM Gaming and Team Secret would be returning for this season and that playdays would be moved to Thursdays from their usual Wednesday timeslot came just two days before the season kicked off, just after the first game of the CS:GO Premiership Season.
This week sees play day two of action following another delay in games similar to that in the Benelux League. Here eight teams play a single best-of-one matchup every week for seven weeks with the top two making the LAN Finals and the following four playing playoffs to determine which two teams will join them. The previous two PC winners include MnM Gaming and Team Secret, both of which are vying for this season’s title alongside well known players such as Pengu, Korey (from Na’Vi), Ferral and Lacky (both ex-Team Secret), Prox (ex-MnM), M4DMAN (from the only R6 Premiership XBOX winning roster) and the ex-Challenger League players of Sloppy, Sparxo, TankNinjaz and Oraghon.
This week sees four more matches, with the highlight likely being as the newly promoted team to the Pro League and reigning Premiership champion, MnM Gaming, taking on Aquila Esports. Aquila, previously known as Vexed, ended the last two seasons of the league play in second place before defeating MnM in the LAN semi-finals last Winter and losing to them during last season’s semi-finals. This has very likely created some sort of rivalry between the teams, however, the interesting part of this matchup comes as Aquila’s star player is the most successful player in R6 history, Niclas "Pengu" Mouritzen. This will be the first time MnM plays such a notable opponent since their promotion to the Pro League and it will be interesting to see how they fare against Pengu without the rest of G2 behind him.
Saturday League: Premier Division - ForeignFive vs PENTA
Finally, we have the German national league in the Saturday League which this weekend passes its halfway point through the league. At the halfway point it is fairly close, with just two points separating the top three teams of PENTA, ForeignFive, and BUTEO eSports hence why this matchup between two of them is so important.
The last time these two teams met, ForeignFive pulled off quite an upset as they defeated PENTA 7-0, however, the only German member of the PENTA roster, Lucas "Hungry" Reich, had been subbed out for their analyst, Jess “Jess” Bolden, as he was on holiday. This week, the roster will presumably be back up to strength, meaning we’ll hopefully get to see a closer game between the top two teams in the league.
The Saturday League banner via @saturdayleague_
The team of ForeignFive at the moment sits in a curious position of being in second in both the Benelux League and the Saturday League, besting some of the top established teams in both regions. With this level of success and possibly two upcoming LAN events in the Benelux Finals and the 2019 Castle Siege event, it is likely we see a much bigger organisation pick these guys up in the coming months. For now, they’ll be trying to repeat their success against PENTA from a few weeks ago to push to the top of the league and make themselves the new favourites for the title and the automatic qualification for the Castle Siege LAN, but either way, their future as a team looks promising.
The current Saturday League standings after seven playdays via Liquipedia.
--- These are the biggest and most interesting matchups this coming week across the secondary-level tournaments around the world. Keep an eye out for more SiegeGG coverage of all levels of Rainbow Six, including the finale of the APAC Challenger League and the upcoming Vegas Minor event.