The Cyberathlete Championship Series attempted to cement itself as one of the very top leagues in R6 this season with $20,000 and five Pro League teams initially involved across the two regions. While a break due to the various bugs and the Six Invitational derailed their schedule and led to a large number of teams leaving the league, we have now reached its conclusion, and this weekend will see the top remaining teams battle it out for the top prize and the title of CCS champions.
The Teams
The four top teams in each region qualified for the online playoffs which will consist of a standard single-elimination bracket to determine the victor.
Europe
As the two Challenger League teams, Supremacy and Xtreme Video Esport will be the clear favourites, making their initial semi-final meetup likely the most important match of the whole playoffs. Across the four tournaments these two organisations have met in -- CCS, the Challenger League, Gamers’ Assembly, and the Lyon e-Sport cup -- Supremacy has won in every meetup, including twice in the last week alone. Clearly, the odds are really stacked against XTreme despite them coming in as the first seed compared to Supremacy’s fourth seeding.
The other semi-final includes two lesser known and teams in dizLown Esport and Epsilon eSports. Epsilon is the only non-French team to make the playoffs and is best known for their ex-coach, James "Sternab" Parkinson. However, the most interesting part about the roster is that with just two play days remaining, all but two of the players announced that they had left the team, effectively disbanding. The players then seemingly came back together to finish the season off and so will presumably be together for these playoffs, but this obviously does not bode well for the roster’s future.
Their opponent, dizLown Esport, sit in the curious position of finishing third in the league without winning a single game. Instead, their 10 points come from two forfeit victories, an inherited victory from Team Vitality who they replaced in the league, and a single draw against T3H Esports halfway through the season.
While this seems to reflect poorly on dizLown, joining via a late add-in qualifier and their opponents forfeiting can hardly be held against them and as their only two losses were against the unbeatable Team Empire and the league leaders of XTreme, their record is somewhat understandable. This all makes dizLown somewhat of a wildcard. We have seen very little from them to make any judgements which could lead them to an unexpected Grand Finals matchup.
North America
After finishing second for two seasons running, the regular season league leaders of SiNister Academy will be eager to finally take the title for themselves and while they may not be the best-known roster in the league, they certainly have the record to back themselves up. They defeated the second placed team of Altis Police Department, and drew against both Organised Chaos and Team Reciprocity, but have yet to play against their semi-final matchup opponents -- Ocean Creatures.
Ocean Creatures just about made it into the playoffs on head-to-head round difference against the Challenger League roster of Tune 6quad. They will now face the challenge of getting their second victory of the season in their semi-final matchup against SiNister on Saturday if they wish to make it any further in the league.
The second semi-final is sure to be a thriller as the reigning CCS champions of Atlis Police Department play against the leading Challenger League team of Organised Chaos (oC). These two teams have already played earlier in the season, and the result was a resounding oC victory. However, things have looked dicey for the Pro League hopefuls since then.
Organised Chaos went from losing just a single game against Reciprocity in their two-month history to losing five out of their last six games, showing that it is certainly possible to take down this otherwise formidable roster. The team also lost Gurman "GurmyWormy" Bains recently and will be playing with their substitute Christian "Prod" Gauch instead.
The Schedule
Each region will have four games, all of them a best-of-three, and the Grand Finals will also feature the exciting prospect of unlimited overtime. It was in a CCS game where the longest-ever map of formal competitive Siege was played, finishing 17-15 in favour of HAT Academy against GrizzlyGG thanks to unlimited overtime.
The four games will be played each day on the 27-28th of April across both regions at the following times:
Europe:
- Saturday 19:00CET - XTreme Video Esports vs Supremacy
- Saturday 21:00CET - Epsilon eSports vs dizLown esport
- Sunday 19:00CET - Third place playoff
- Sunday 21:00CET - Grand Finals
North America:
- Saturday 19:00EST - SiNister Academy vs Ocean Creatures
- Saturday 21:00EST - Atlis Police Department vs Organised Chaos
- Sunday 19:00EST - Third place playoff
- Sunday 21:00EST - Grand Finals
The Broadcast
The games will be played from the ccsesports Twitch account, with the European games presumably also covered in the French language on the esix_france Twitch account by the usual casting talent.
On these channels, the massive prizes will be allocated in the following way:
- 1st place - $5,000
- 2nd place - $2,500
- 3rd place - $1,500
- 4th place - $1,000
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