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.
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ESL Premiership Summer 2019 - Finals
This Saturday sees the end of the most recent season of the ESL Premiership as Natus Vincere, Team Secret, MnM Gaming and T3H Esports meet at De Montfort University, Leicester to fight for the title of the best team in the UK and the top slice of the £8,200 (~$10k) prizepool.
The venue via www.dmu.ac.uk/
Natus Vincere will be the clear favourites as the defending champions and current Pro League team, however, Team Secret will be hot on their heels. As well as being an ex-champion of the league as well, Secret will be attending the upcoming Six Major event following their victory at the Allied Minor last June proving that, despite them being in the Challenger League they are one of the top teams in Europe, sitting in eleventh in the World in the SiegeGG Rankings at the moment.
The end of season standings via @Rainbow6_UK
Also of note is T3H Esports whose roster contains the ex-Team Secret and Premiership champion of Ryan "Lacky" Stapley as well as the two ex-Challenger League players of Tom "TankNinjaz" Connelly and Alexander "Oraghon" Bolsun. This team was the only one to gain points off of Na’Vi as their match halfway through the season ended in a draw showing that this new roster has serious potential as they aim to meet Secret in Season 10 of the Challenger League. Finally, attending the LAN we have MnM Gaming (previously known as Who Knows) who will be hoping to continue their new organisation’s fruitful history in the league with a successful result here.
The Finals will see the initial semi-finals of Na’Vi vs T3H at midday local time followed by Secret vs MnM with the grand-final scheduled for around 19:30. Attending the event will be the most successful R6 player in the world, Niclas "Pengu" Mouritzen, as well as the content creators of Snedger and coreRoss with the talent covering the event seen below. Tickets for the event can be found here with the games being streamed on the rainbowsix_uk Twitch channel.
The talent for the event via @ESL_UK
PG Nationals Summer 2019 - Finals
Happening on the same day at the Olympic Theatre in Rome is the PG Nationals LAN Finals where the Italian national champions will be crowned.
Mkers, previously known as EnD Gaming, will be hoping to make this a fourth straight title for the team after a disappointing performance at Dreamhack Valencia and, considering their domination during the regular season, they’re undoubtedly the favourites to do so. Mkers ended the regular season with almost twice the number of points of their closest rivals -- 40 points to 21 -- as they won 13 out of 14 games they played in. The one lone game they failed to win ended in a draw against Notorious Legion, their opponents this weekend.
The standings via nationals.pge.gg/r6
Notorious Legion has been in this position before as, under their previous organisation of Outplayed, they reached the LAN Finals of the Summer 2018 ESL Italia nationals where they finished third before joining the organisation of Mkers themselves. This makes this game a very familiar one for fans of the region as, despite new faces on both teams, this game has been seen again and again at the national level with the EnD Gaming roster getting the upper hand each time.
The finals will be a best-of-five matchup as previous Finals had been, with tickets available from €10 right here. Doors will open at 3pm local time, however, they have yet to announce when the game itself will kick-off. The games will be streamed on the rainbow6it Twitch account with the full lineup of casters for the event seen below:
The casters for the weekend via @PGEsportIT
United States Nationals 2019: Stage 2 - Semi-Finals
Tonight and Thursday will see the semi-finals of Stage 2 of the US Nationals. To put it simply, tonight will see Disrupt vs TSM and Luminosity vs Rogue with the winner of each game facing off for a LAN spot next week, while on Thursday Parallax Gaming plays Rise Nation and DZ faces SSG with those winners also playing next week in the Stage finals.
With five Pro League and two Challenger League teams involved, this should be an action-packed week as the stakes rise in the tournament. Probably most interesting will be Thursday’s game of DarkZero vs SSG as DZ knocked out SSG earlier in the Stage 2 qualifiers with the winner fairly likely to make it to the $140,000 Finals. Their opponents will either be Rise Nation who put up a very weak fight in the Six Major qualifiers, losing to two Tier 3 rosters, or Parallax Gaming, a pretty much unknown roster who defeated DZ to make it this far already.
Today however we have another all-Pro League matchup between LG and Rogue, a game which ended tied during the Pro League this season as well as a game between TSM, a team famed for their weakness in best-of-ones, against Disrupt with their new pickup of Adam "Drip" Kolodkin -- the ex-player for the LG roster. These both should be great matches with the latter’s revenge story likely being the highlight
These games can all be caught on the main rainbow6 Twitch channel at the usual time as we see some of the very best teams in NA clash.
6 French League 2019
Finally, we have the French National tournament as the two best known “French” rosters of Looking For Org and Team Vitality face off in the penultimate week before the mid-season break.
The schedule via @R6esports_FR
These two Pro League teams currently sit in second and third in the French League -- as they do in the Pro League also -- following LFO’s loss to PENTA and Vitality’s draws against both PENTA and GameWard Team. This means that, while both teams are almost certainly going to make it to the LAN Finals in November, this game will probably decide who ends the half in second place and who are inline for a 3-6th place finish and the subsequent playoffs.
The last time these two teams met was in the Pro League in which the team then known as LeStream pummelled Vitality 7-2, however, this was with Alive subbed in and since then Vitality has picked up Teemu "Stigi" Sairi to permanently fill in the void left by the departure of sNKy from the main roster, and have looked formidable remaining undefeated in the Pro League and finishing the Six Major qualifiers in third. This all creates what should be a great show on Wednesday as these two sides meet.
Elsewhere of note is the game between GameWard Team and PENTA as PENTA are keen to keep their unbeaten record alive against what is a very promising roster. GameWard currently sits in fourth place with eight points largely thanks to the incredible fragging power of Leo "M4DMAN" Kukielka which, as of last week, is now joined by the extremely experienced ex-Pro League player of Gaël "Liven" Gruyere. This week they’ll have the tough task of attempting to topple PENTA who, despite worrying results in the Pro League, seems to be going strong in the French League despite playing with a substitute.
The statistics for last week’s GameWard Team matchup
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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 BR6 Finals happening this weekend.