With Season 10 of the Pro League a few weeks away, let’s take a look at some of the best action and biggest news across the lower-tier leagues over the last seven days.
Tournament Updates
In the last week, the teams for the upcoming French League and the ANZ Six Masters League have all been confirmed ahead of their kick off in a few weeks time.
The French League organisers invited eight teams who had at least two French nationals and three players from Francophone nations (Belgium, Luxemburg, and Switzerland, most notably). This includes the Pro League teams of Team Vitality, LeStream Esport and PENTA, who will presumably be playing with a substitute to fill the requirements. Other notable teams include the ex-Pro League team of Supremacy and ZephiR’s new lineup of Team MCES with the full list below:
The first eight of twelve teams for the upcoming Six Masters 2019 was also determined as two of the top performing teams in recent Go4 tournaments were invited to join the top six teams from the Pro League in the league. This means the top APAC teams of 0RGL3SS and Fnatic will be playing in the first proper national league in the ANZ region’s history. The two qualified teams include Team Equinox who have also qualified for the Pro League in the last week as well as Off the Grid Esports, best known for the third-place finish in the 2019 Summer Series and first-round exit from the Oceanic Cup.
Benelux League
After a number of weeks of smoothly-run matches, last week’s games were delayed to this Thursday due to the deactivation of claymores, deployable shields, and Clash. Following this, one of these games was delayed yet again due to technical issues, meaning there were just two Benelux games this week -- ForeignFive (F5) vs El Whiz Wranglers (EWW) and Flash Point vs Conquer Gaming.
F5 started off their game by going up by three rounds before their opponents could get a grip on what was happening and continued to trade rounds back and forth. While EWW did put up some manner of a fight in a number of rounds, the KDs of 1.67, 1.83, and 2 from Haze, Next1 and Eastwood respectively were too much for the sixth-placed team in the league to handle, leading to a 3-7 defeat -- their third in four games.
The second game was somewhat closer, as the current Flash Point roster faced off against Conquer Gaming, the ex-Flash Point roster, on Clubhouse. This game was the highly billed one of the day as the new and old rosters faced off, and they certainly showed us why as the teams traded rounds up until the side swap. Flash Point managed to chain together three rounds in a row before losing two of their own in failed Church/Arsenal holds, leading to an eventual scoreline of 6-5 to Flash Point, with the deciding round in the basement:
With these victories, ForeignFive have now guaranteed their spot at the LAN Finals later this month, while Flash Point needs just a single point against Trust Gaming, or for a single other result to go their way to also qualify for the Finals. Next week, we will presumably see the two remaining playdays, as well as this week’s delayed games, all take place in the busiest period in the R6 Benelux region’s history.
Roster Changes
This last week saw a large number of roster changes which can all be seen in the NA, EU, LATAM and APAC threads. Here are the most notable ones.
In Europe, we saw the biggest change in R6 rosters in a year as jNSzki was replaced in G2 Esports, the most successful team in the world, by the fellow Finn and ex-LeStream player of UUNO. This breaks up the core four players that we have seen play together since Season 4 of the Pro League and have won an unrivalled three Pro League and three Major titles in the last two years. Another historic change happened when mousesports player Willkey, after sticking with the same team since Season 1 of R6 esports, finally left on Friday to “look for opportunities in other Pro League teams”.
Elsewhere in Latin America, the void in Team Liquid created by the retirement of ziG was filled by the ex-FaZe Clan and Black Dragons player of Muringa, while in North America DarkZero Esports broke their core lineup stretching back to Flipsid3 Tactics as they replaced Jarvis with the incredible fragger of Hyper.
SiegeGG’s Team Liquid roster change announcement
APAC Challenger League
The Challenger League for each of the Asia-Pacific’s sub-regions came to an end this week as we learnt the final teams which will be playing in Season 10 of the Pro League.
In ANZ the TBD roster, now known as Power Plays, retained their place in the Pro League to be joined by Team Equinox, a roster best known by its ex-TABOO player of Jam. In Japan, the roster that was previously the sister team of NORA-Rengo, and which includes two ex-NR players (JJ and CrazyPapiyoN), stormed to the top of the table and will be joined in the Pro League by the outsiders of NNP, a team which only made it to the Challenger League in the final qualifier.
Next, we have Southeast Asia, where the Malaysian and Thai rosters of Lèsè Esports and NEX ESPORTS stormed ahead with 26 and 22 points compared to the third place roster with just 13 points. Finally, we have South Korea which maintains just a four-team Pro League and will welcome the third-placed team from the Six Challenge Korea 2019, Potato, as well as another orgless roster in TRIPPY.
While the APAC region’s Challenger League gets almost no coverage or support, this is a huge step up for these teams and a chance for them to play with the very best in their region.
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And so, there’s the weekly roundup of results across the Rainbow Six competitive world. Check back here next week for more coverage of R6 action at all levels of play!