Quake Challengers League Is Back And The Bracket Is Stacked

Challengers League is officially back this Saturday (1/16/2021).

EU Sign Ups – Starts 2pm CET, signups close 12 hours before.

Americas Sign Ups – Starts 2pm EST, signups close 12 hours before.

Map Pool:

Awoken • Blood Covenant • Blood Run • Corrupted Keep • Ruins of Sarnath • The Molten Falls • Vale of Pnath • Exile

What happened last season?

In the stage one Challengers League finals, Myztro Serious and Myztro Garpy qualified on the EU side with dominant performances over established players like Myztro Hell, St0n3, unde4d, and CH33RA.

Garpy went on to steamroll the legendary Swedish Pro “Toxjq” to secure his position in the Quake Pro League, in a tight but decisive 3-0 victory.

Serious went on to face CNZ in his relegation match, and it was an absolute slugfest until the final buzzer. CNZ came away with the victory in a close 3-2 battle though, sending Serious back to the Challengers.

In the Americas region Sib and sUPREMEGTI qualified in equally impressive fashion. Sib was able to win the entire tournament and only lost a single map. sUPREMEGTI only lost 2 maps, one to korssa1r, and one to sib. I’d also like to mention that he played through an actual earthquake during his match in the loser bracket finals with chance.

In order to make it back into the QPL Sib would need to get past Zenaku, while sUPREMEGTI had to beat effortless.

Sib almost clawed his way back into the league, but eventually fell to Zenaku 3-2.

sUPREMEGTI came out swinging vs Effortless, who was quickly able to adapt to sUPREMEGTI’s aggressive style, and dismantled him one map at a time, winning the set 3-0.

So, who is coming back?

The EU region might be more stacked than ever. If you’ve been watching Twitch streams at all, you’d notice that someone by the name of “Clawz” is back, and within 3 days of grinding ranked, made it back to elite tier.

In a tweet he made last week, he stated he would be taking a small break from Apex to play Quake and Diabotical. For those of you new to Quake Champions, Clawz was the first Qcon champ back in 2017, he is also considered one of the best hitscan aimers in the entire world.

Team Myztro is also practicing hard. Hell is very close to breaking through, and Serious has an LG that hits like a truck. Currently Vengeur, Raisy, Garpy are already in the league making Myztro the most dominant team currently in Quake Champions.

Rohm, Retc0n, and Almaril – Two German’s who are as feisty as K1llsen. Rohm is currently grinding harder than anyone I’ve seen. Almaril is one of, if not the best female Quake player in the world currently. She will represent France.

The Russians

While Coollerz looks to be scaling back his Quake time, there are others who are stepping up in an attempt to fill his shoes.

St0n3 – This guy is a machine. I’ve seen him win a handful of tournaments, where he’s often playing until it’s 3am, only to get up a few hours later for work. St0n3 also qualified two seasons ago, and looks stronger than ever.

CH33RA, unde4d, PASITA, inz, klyb PepCo are all strong players who are capable of taking maps off of the pros.

What about The Americas?

South America has been taking their Quake to the next level. sUPREMEGTI, Korssa1r, and InVaSoR certainly have what it takes to qualify. Currently, Nosfa and Maxterr are the only two South American players in the Quake Pro League, but the SA region is chomping at the bit to get another competitor in there.

Sib has confirmed he’ll be making another run in challengers, and has been in the Quake Pro League once before, so he knows what he needs to do in order to get back in pro shape.

Chance is an old school pro who was competing and winning in tournaments as far back as Quake 4, but really made a name for himself in Quake Live.

Siluro and Oliokath are representing Canada, both players showed ridiculous rocket accuracy and prediction leading up to the finals.

SHrulez and dandaking will be representing our aussie brothers, who are looking to follow in Zenaku’s footsteps.

Georgi3 and Furious1 have taken their game up a notch in the off season as well, putting in the time and practice which is exactly what you need to do if you’re losing very close matches. Look to see them try to qualify early on.

It should also be noted that the new map pool is as follows:

Awoken • Blood Covenant • Blood Run • Corrupted Keep • Ruins of Sarnath • The Molten Falls • Vale of Pnath • Exile

Tower of Koth and Blood Covenant are gone and Vale of Pnath is back. This will lead to more aggressive matchups, less favorable to defensive styles.

Conclusion – In over 20 years of Quake eSports, the talent pool has never been this scary. The next 8 weeks are going to produce some high level brawls that will be remembered for a long time.

If you missed the road to the finals last season, you can see my recap below.