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NA RCS Season 3 Top 50 Introduction and HMs

Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. Season 3 (May 2018 – January 2019) was our largest year yet with plenty of exciting events to review and talented players to recognize. Before we delve into the rankings this year, here’s an introduction on how the list was formed along with our honorable mentions.

Other Articles in this Series:

Player Qualifications

For the season 3 rankings, we only considered players with results from official Rivals Championship Series events. It’s worth noting that excitingly, more Rivals-only events are beginning to become large enough, competitive enough, and diverse enough to entertain this list encompassing events outside of the RCS. Our ranking council did hold a discussion on this but ultimately decided to wait until next season to begin including them.

In addition to competing in these events, players must also have accrued at least 2 RCS points over the season. This means that at a bare minimum they needed to place top 32 in 2 events. More results leads to a more informed ranking and more participation leads to a more involved community.

Lastly, players also had to be based in the North American (NA) region to be included on this list. You can find the European Season 3 Ranking here.

Methodology

This year instead of our traditional ballot/panel combination our premise began with a ranking system similar to other sports. Players were ranked based on their best 4 placings at events, with events themselves weighted by size and top player attendance.

Whether the event took place offline or online was also taken into consideration. Online events are always a contentious piece of the puzzle for our top 50 rankings, and this year we’ve continued the trend of placing importance heavily on offline results. Exceptional players that only competed online have been included, but may appear lower on the list due to lack of offline results. Keep in mind this is not intended to disrespect their skill, but rather our concession that we’re unable to place them accurately in the context of the full season’s events and offline finals.

Once this ranking system was completed, a council made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results, activity, and other data. This group consisted of Etalus, Menace13, MSB, SBS, Sparx21, and Willby.

Honorable Mentions

We have two different groupings of players that we would like to recognize in our honorable mentions. The first (Just Missed the Cut) includes players who fell outside of the top 50 list by a slim margin.

The second (Hidden Bosses) includes players who played in too little to accurately judge over the season, but their skill stood out in what they did attend. Keep an eye out for all of these players at season 4 events.

Just Missed the Cut

Lattim
Willby

Hidden Bosses

Ceztellz
Forrest
Heyodogo
Omen
Pepe
ProDoubleSushi
Sino

We’ll be releasing the top 50 throughout this week counting down from #50 – #1. Let us know if you have any additional questions about the process, and we hope you’re looking foward to the reveal!

EU RCS Season 4 Schedule Revealed

The European region of the Rivals Championship Series is getting a big expansion this year, debuting for the first time ever at several major European Smash events. Along with these new inclusions we’re also happy to announce that Rivals will be returning to some community-run favorites. Sign-ups are available now for Summer events with more information to follow on ones later in the year. Many of these events have an entrant cap so make sure to plan out your year of competitive Rivals ahead of time and register now.

EU Rivals Championship Series 2019 Schedule

Event Location Date
June Online Monthly Online June 30th
Albion 4 London, UK July 6th – 7th
Awakening 5 Munich, DE August 16th – 18th
September Online Monthly Online September 1st
Bifrost III – Sessrumnir Huddinge, SE September 20th – 22nd
Syndicate 2019 Utrecht, NL October 25th – 27th
November Online Monthly Online November 10th
Traction 5 Leerdam, NL Nov. 30th – Dec. 1st

EU RCS Rewards Update

In addition to our traditional travel voucher awarded to first place, we’re also adding some new rewards for our European community this year. This season first through eighth place in the standings will receive limited edition RCS prizes.

With each season seeing more competition and dedicated players we wanted to extend the prizes beyond the current first place focus. We’ll be revealing more about what exactly the limited edition items entail later this year!

We hope you’re excited to watch and attend European RCS events this season. Let us know what you think of the schedule in the comments below.

AU RCS Season 4 Schedule Revealed

Season 4 of the Rivals Championship Series kicks off this month for the Australian region, and today we’re excited to reveal this year’s full schedule. You can register for some events right now (with more to follow soon) to start planning your year of competitive Rivals.

AU Rivals Championship Series 2019 Schedule

Event Location Date
June Online Monthly Online June 26th
BigWinChampionship 2 Perth, Australia July 6th – 7th
Metal Cavern Burwood NSW July 27th
CouchWarriors RanBat July Brunswick VIC July 27th
Biggie II Wellington, New Zealand August 24th – 25th
September Online Monthly Online September 11th
October Online Monthly Online October 23rd
Mega Metal Cavern 2 Burwood NSW November 15th
CouchWarriors Crossup Victoria December

AU RCS Rewards Update

In addition to our traditional travel voucher awarded to first place, we’re also adding some new rewards for our Australian community this year. This season first through fourth place in the standings will receive limited edition RCS prizes.

With each season seeing more competition and dedicated players we wanted to extend the prizes beyond the current first place focus. We’ll be revealing more about what exactly the limited edition items entail later this year!

We hope you’re excited to watch and attend Australian RCS events this season. Let us know what you think of the schedule in the comments below.

Smash’N’Splash 5 Event Wrap-Up

Season 4 of the Rivals Championship Series started off this year with our insanely stacked opener event at Smash’N’Splash 5. Amazing sets, rising stars, and upsets galore dotted this bracket. If this is any indication of what’s to come then it’s going to be a great year for competitive Rivals. Read on for a recap featuring highlights, event photos, and more.

VODS

Let’s start with the VoDs in case you’re here to avoid spoilers. You can find everything we had on stream over at VGBootCamp. Days 2 and 3 (Top 32 and Top 8) are currently live, with day 1 singles pools and doubles top 4 coming soon.

TOP 8 HIGHLIGHTS

If you’d rather skip right to the end and see some of the action from top 8, we’ve put together a highlight video from the Sunday finals with the help of JarekBloodDragon.

THE CHAMP

Congratulations to Penguin for his first place finish in singles. He’s been waiting in the wings for his first win at a major this size and securing it here is obviously a great start to his season. Penguin also took down doubles from loser’s side with the help of his teammate CakeAssault.

SINGLES RESULTS

Our top 32 was incredibly diverse at this event. Combined with new players and some top 16 upsets this led to some surprising matchups in top 8.

Standing Player Character
1st Penguin
2nd CakeAssault
3rd AF | Windows
4th TUX | DolphinBrick
5th Seggo
5th Jesier
7th SNT | MSB
7th ISG | Sparx21
Full Standings >

DOUBLES RESULTS

Standing Player Character
1st 27.98 (Penguin / CakeAssault)
2nd Explosions galore (gracefulknight / PG | FullStream)
3rd MS-DOS (SNT | MSB / OCE | Dos Rogers)
Full Standings >

EVENT PHOTOS

We were thrilled to once again have Xenos capture our event. Check out his album to see what an RCS event looks like.

We hope you enjoyed the first event of the season. Make sure to sign up or join us on stream at the next stop for the RCS, one of the few online events of the season, our July Online Major.

NA RCS Season 4 Schedule Revealed

Season 4 of the Rivals Championship Series kicks off today, and this year we’re revealing the entire regular season schedule at once. You can register for some events right now (with more to follow this month) so you can start planning your year of competitive Rivals.

Rivals Championship Series 2019 Schedule

Event Location Date
Smash’N’Splash 5 WI Dells, WI May 31st – June 2nd
RCS Online Major Online July 20th
EVO 2019 Las Vegas, NV August 2nd – 4th
Super Smash Con 2019 Chantilly, VA August 8th – 11th
Glitch 7 with Ultimate Rivalries Laurel, MD Sept. 14th – 15th
Heat Wave 3 Tempe, AZ Oct. 19th – 20th
DreamHack Atlanta Atlanta, GA Nov. 15th – 17th
RCS Online Major Online Dec. (Date TBA)

Download PDF Version

Season 4 Events Primer

One of the first things fans will notice this year is that there’s now more time between events. Even though there’s no shortage of great tournaments to be a part of, we would rather make the pacing more manageable instead of forcing attendees to pick and choose.

Our goal for the circuit is to make each event one worth traveling to. Each stop on the circuit promises new cities, more games, high quality production, and the biggest stages for Rivals players to compete on. This year we’ve continued the tradition of representing our community alongside the greater FGC, and have even expanded to some exciting new events to keep tournaments bigger and better.

This season also features much fewer online events than previous years. While online events are easy to join, we’ve heard loud and clear that players prefer the competitive integrity of offline events for the official circuit. The ones we do feature on the circuit this year will be huge, but not a place to get your weekly or monthly tournament fix like previous seasons. Make sure to visit our discord server and check out the tournament section for daily online events.

Finally, one other notable reason we’ve slimmed down our event schedule is to allow the flourishing grassroots scene room to grow. This is something we’ve been honored and humbled to see happening, and this year seemed like the right time to let these events really come into their own. These are events where Rivals is the focus, the schedule is dedicated to it, the stream is dedicated to it, and the fans are coming out for it – so make sure to support these events when you can.

We hope you’re excited to watch and attend our events this year! Let us know what you think of the schedule in the comments below.