FaZe Clan’s new roster for the 2021-22 season, AYYJAYY, Allushin & Firstkiller.
ESPORTS! It’s time for more Esports news, RLCS edition! The RLCS 2021-22 season is well underway at this point, we’ve worked our way through 2 of the 3 regionals that are set to make up the Fall split with Europe, South America, Asia-Pacific North, and Sub-Saharan Africa left to complete their regional, but we’re not here to talk about those regions today, today I want to have an in-depth look at what happened this past weekend in the North American region, there were some surprises, some upsets and some incredible Rocket League play this weekend, so lets not dilly dally and get straight into it!
We’ll start where every regional starts off, the Swiss stage to finalize the final 8 qualifying positions for the playoffs which begin on a Saturday, don’t make top 8? Unfortunate! But you do get automatic qualification for the closed qualifier for regional 3, it’s not much but it’s something right? For those not in the know, we’re first going to go over what the swiss format is. A Swiss system tournament features a set number of rounds, in the case of the RLCS this season, you’ll play a maximum of 5 rounds. As soon as you win 3 rounds you qualify for the playoffs, but if you lose 3 rounds that’s it, you’re outta there!
So, in the first round of games, you win your game, you get matched up in a “high round” against other teams that win their opener, if you lose it’s the same but you’re matched against those who lose. Are you following? Okay, good. The Swiss stage for this regional saw a few big omissions if you ask me, the first was FaZe, for those who have been following, FaZe won regional 1 and looked fantastic doing it, they recently picked up FirstKiller who is seen as by some as the best player in the world, theoretically after looking so good in regional one, his partnership with AYYJAYY and Allushin would only get better right? Well, not exactly. Their Swiss stage was very hit and miss, they swept RBG 3:0, got beat off the Machine (Envy) 3:1 in round 2, beat Version 1 (Who qualified for the playoffs) 3:1 in round 3, round 4 looked to be where they’d finally seal their 3rd win, playing against NA new boys True Neutral.
Unfortunately for FaZe, True Neutral (former South American Champions) was looking to play some top-tier Rocket League as they went on to sweep the reigning regional champions, we expected a good series, but nobody saw a 3:0 sweep incoming. Which set up a 5th round game against Spacestation Gaming… Wait, what were they doing there??? Well, I’m glad you asked! SSG also had a super rough time of things in the Swiss stage. They beat EUNited 3:1 in round 1, got swept by G2 3:0 in round 2, had a tight game against Ghost Gaming where they ended up losing 3:2 in round 3, then went on to beat a really poor looking Rogue team 3:1 in round 4, before setting up the final round match against FaZe.
I don’t think any of the best online betting sites would’ve seen a FaZe vs SSG match in the fifth round of the Swiss stage. FaZe were considered favorites but got outscored 4-9 losing 3:1, SSG moved onto the playoffs! Though it didn’t last, their first opponent of the playoffs? NRG. Not a team anybody wants to play, even a team like SSG who aren’t necessarily in the best form. NRG had a pretty solid run through the playoff bracket, they comfortably beat SSG 4:2, never really looking like they had to move out of second gear, however, their series against The Machine didn’t really go as planned at first, they found themselves 2:1 down, with their win being a narrow 2-1 victory. Game 4 went to Envy after 8 minutes and 41 seconds of overtime, that’s outrageous when a normal game is 5 minutes! They won 3 games B2B2B to take the set 4:3 moving onto the final.
But who would they play in the final? Well, G2 qualified for the playoffs as the #1 seed, they swept Ghost Gaming, SSG and XSet winning 9 games out of 9 to give them a super early finish on the Friday, you love to see it. First round of the playoffs, they play Ghost Gaming again. Could they carry on their form from Friday? Well it looked unlikely as they lost the first 2 games of the Best of 7 4-0 and 2-0. Was Ghost about to cause a huge upset? Unfortunately for Ghost, no, they weren’t. G2 took 4 games b2b2b2B to win the set 4:2 setting up a semi final against True Neutral!
This was one I was looking forward to, I’ve been fully on board the True Neutral hype train. However, they weren’t quite up to the task of taking on G2. After taking game 1 2-1, but again, G2 bounced back massively, again winning 4 games back to back to take the series 4:1 setting up a scintillating final against NRG!
