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 you don’t miss the best action going on at all levels of play.
TopAchat Cup #1
Ran by an online French electronics store, the TopAchat Cup will be an online €5,000 tournament held this weekend including a number of notable teams from throughout Europe.
The six invited teams via @EnDGaminGIT
The Pro League team of LeStream Esports will be joined by the two Challenger League teams of Supremacy and EnD Gaming, as well as a few recognisable names in AlerioN eSport, the new TrainHard eSport roster, and the wonderfully named lineup of Team ZephiR. As well as these six invited teams, an open qualifier over the last few days decided the remaining ten teams that will join the single-elimination finals.
“This is the beginning of the qualifying phase for the #TopAchatCup! Good luck to all the teams, we hope to see you next week in the tournament 😎 to follow the competition is here”
Despite being a fairly small tournament, this is a great chance for new up-and-coming teams and players to make their case to some larger teams, and will likely lead to a rematch of yesterday’s Challenger League matchup between EnD and Supremacy in a best-of-three setting. The games will be cast by Guillaume "Scok" Beck and Sébastien "FuriouSG" Guérineau on the topachat Twitch account, with the round-of-16 and quarter-finals on Saturday followed by the semi-finals and best-of-five map grand-final on Sunday.
Challenger League: NA - Susquehanna Soniqs vs Vicious Gaming
The third and fourth placed teams will face off on Friday night as the two fan favourite teams attempt to secure a playoff position with just a few weeks left in the regular season.
The current NA Challenger League standings after four playdays via Liquipedia
Organised Chaos surprised everyone as they shot to the top to the league early on, and remain undefeated and a whole six points ahead of their closest rivals. This performance has now put the all ex-Pro League lineup of Soniqs (previously known as Elephant Gang) and the Vicious Gaming roster (previously known as ‘92 Dream Team) in a precarious position -- the two teams are now part of a five-way race for second.
As the case with Team Vitality in Europe and Team oNe e-Sports in Latin America, the first place in North America is seemingly locked down, meaning a fourth-place playoff position puts you in an incredibly difficult position, as teams will likely have to beat the undefeated oC roster to get your chance at the Pro League. This means that with just three weeks left in the Challenger League, matchups between these five teams will be key to not only get ahead on points against their rivals but also to ensure your team has the head-to-head round difference advantage in order to push yourself ahead in case of a draw.
The statistics between Soniqs and Vicious Gaming during Week 1 of Season 9 of the Challenger League
This matchup along with another tantalising game between Disrupt Gaming and Elevate -- two more teams also in the running for the top positions -- will be the opening games this week on Friday evening across the rainbowsix_uk and stoaxtv Twitch accounts.
Russian Major League Season 2
The second season of the Russian Major League kicks off tonight at 7pm CEST as the eight top teams in Russia begin their two-month campaign to be crowned the Russian champions and win the lion’s share of the €6,800 prize pool.
Above: The trailer for the RML Season 1 LAN Finals in Moscow
As one of the most impressive rosters in the world right now, having finished second at the 2019 Six Invitational and sitting comfortably at the top of the European region of the Pro League, Team Empire is obviously the clear favourite to win this tournament. The roster previously won the last season of the RML as well as its predecessor, the Russian Championship, and will now be expected to storm to victory once again, however, there may be a few obstacles in their way.
Firstly, we have the forZe roster, which made a name for itself during the Six Invitational qualifiers after knocking out both Supremacy and Team Secret, despite not being in the Pro or Challenger League themselves.
ForZe’s star fragger, Kirill “SmashByAsh” Belozerov, at the FC Spartak Moscow stadium via @SmashByAsh
Aside from forZe, another notable CS:GO organisation is also present as possible challengers to Team Empire -- AVANGAR -- which recently acquired the promising roster of Raiders. Last season, the Raiders roster took two maps off of Team Empire during the LAN Finals in December, getting the closest to defeating the quickly rising Russian powerhouse as compared to the majority of Pro League teams since.
The league will see two best-of-two matchups every Tuesday and Wednesday for the following seven weeks before the top four teams will meet at the Cyberspace venue in Moscow over the weekend of June 22-23rd to crown the Russian Champions. The games will be streamed on the rainbow6ru Twitch account and the RainbowSixRussian YouTube account with tonight’s matchup between Team Empire and LoseResistance kicking off the action.
Brasileirão 2019 - Immortals vs Team Liquid
Finally, we have the weekly BR6 matches which, once again, promise to be the highlight of the week across all “lower-league” tournaments. This week we’ll see two games in Black Dragons vs paiN Gaming and Immortals vs Team Liquid. As the latter matchup is both a much higher profile game and a rematch of their draw in the Pro League almost exactly a month prior, it is anticipated to be absolutely thrilling.
The statistics between Immortals and Team Liquid during Week 8 of Season 9 in the Pro League
While the two rosters currently in first and third have four points between them, and Immortals are in the lead in the Pro League, the BR6 is a completely different story, with Immortals trailing by a whole ten points with only four matchups remaining. If Immortals want to make it to the biggest LAN event in 2019 for Latin America, they will need to find a way to replicate their online performance in the Brasileirão’s LAN environment in matches such as this, or risk missing out.
The current BR6 standings via @rainbow6br
PTS = Points. J = Games Played. SM = Map Difference. MV = Maps Won. SR = Round Difference. RV = Rounds Won.
This game is clearly the must-watch game of the week, however, their Pro League ambitions may overshadow this matchup as both teams won't want to show off anything too telling with a spot at Milan on the line. The game is scheduled to begin at around 7PM GMT, and will be cast in Portuguese from the rainbow6br Twitch account.
pX and psk1 during the team’s last matchup in the BR6 last November via @rainbow6br’s flickr
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So 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 as the Pro League, BR6, and everything in between all heat up as we near the end of Season 9.