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Season 6 Rankings: #50-41

By SBS — May 16, 2022

Welcome to the North American RCS Season 6 Top 50! Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. The rankings are created by a community panel that considers data from across the season to construct a comprehensive list that highlights our top players and their accomplishments.

View more articles in the Season Six NA Rankings Series:

 

 

50. Death By Hugs

Death By Hugs rings in the Season 6 Top 50 as a returning force to be reckoned with. His season consisted of three online events with wins on players such as Sparx21 and Landkon2. Since the season’s conclusion, we were treated to his performance at Low Tide City, where he put on an aggressive showing with Etalus, placing 7th with wins over CRSDCrusader and ITS A CAT :D.

 

 

“NFT son? or Astrology daughter?”

49. Shotti

Shotti is a Forsburn main from New York returning to the Top 50 this season. He collected wins on old school players such as FullStream, Dam Danny and Mr. Olsen with his return to locals at Heat Wave 4 showcasing his best performance of the season. We hope to see Shotti’s Forsburn make appearances and make more upsets in Season 7.

 

 

“Shoutouts to 4o4 Esports and Greg for being the best venue and host, you are literally the reason why the rivals scene in Georgia is alive and well.”

48. AdamGMAJ

AdamGMAJ is a Kragg from Georgia that picked up Rivals during the pandemic. AdamGMAJ has quickly leveled up over the years with the help of players such as CakeAssault, soulrifle211, and TacocaT. AdamGMAJ has been able to pick up wins in Season 6 on players such as HKP and PlushyPanic, while also collecting a massive upset over MSB in Southeast Mayhem 2022, a non-RCS event in Georgia. Next season, AdamGMAJ aims to improve his consistency and tournament endurance at multi-day events.

 

 

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.”

47. Lucius

Lucius is a New York Ranno known for his methodical neutral and for competing at a high level in full fursuit at local events. Lucius strives for improvement and that drive can be seen following every event he attends. Outside of the game, Lucius is a voice actor and singer with goals to voice a fighting game character in the future.

 

 

“Frenchyy is the soulja boy of Rivals” -@wack-Aj

46. Frenchyy

Frenchyy is the founding member of the Tampa Rivals scene (hosting GoTE 4TheKids 7 to open RCS Season 7 this weekend!) and has been playing since 2017. After entering CEO Dreamland, Frenchyy decided he wanted to be more active in the scene and began cultivating what is now one of the most feared regions in the world. It wasn’t until 2020 that Frenchyy set his sights on the Top 50 rankings. Since then, his goal of traveling more and improving at a fundamental level have been at the forefront of his play. We look forward to seeing him at more events in our heavily locals-focused Season 7 kicking off this weekend.

 

 

“Per ardua ad astra.”

45. Rift

Rift is the head TO in Georgia and has been hard at work to put his state back on the map by building his community. Throughout Season 6, Rift has utilized his B.S. in Astrophysics to pilot his way onto the Top 50 as the only solo Shovel Knight main to make the list. Rift’s goal is to grow the Georgia Rivals scene and to see even more players from the region break into the rankings.

 

 

“The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?
It’s the next one. Always the next step.”

44. Syzygy

Syzygy is a software engineer in Northern California, on a mission to remind the greater Rivals scene of West Coast talent. Syzygy collected consistent placings throughout the year with a second place finish in the Heat Wave 4 Intermediate bracket, blossoming into a breakout 17th place at Genesis 8. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Syzygy enjoys rock climbing, chess, card games, and is also learning game development on the side. Syzygy’s continued improvement indicates that they’re a force to be reckoned with in Season 7.

 

 

“Yeehaw.”

43. Sawtooth

Sawtooth is a former community leader for the Colorado scene, and now one of the most fierce players in Arizona. Sawtooth has been an active member of the community since mid-2017 and has been playing Sylvanos since his reveal at Genesis 5. Season 6 has been a busy time for him, with a focus on competitive growth in a new scene, mindset on the big stage, and content creation to bridge the gap between platform fighter communities. Be on the lookout for Sawtooth in Season 7, as he aims to prove his breakout event at Genesis 8 was no fluke. In the meantime, check out his YouTube and maybe even gain some insight to building a local community of your own.

 

 

 

42. Yeggy

Yeggy is an Ohio Elliana main, known for his devastating punish game and being the top PR member of his region. Yeggy has been playing Rivals for over six years now, and has breached the Top 50 Rankings for the first time. Yeggy’s season consisted of a pretty wide range of results, with victories over players such as Mentos, Death By Hugs, hoppyKnitz, and more. In his Season 6 journey, Yeggy only suffered losses to Top 50 players and proved to be a potent threat to anyone in his path. Yeggy intends to shift his focus more towards content creation and commentating with Season 7 on the horizon.

 

 

“Watch me play Dead by Daylight live at ttv/plastic_dinos.”

41. Zora

Zora is an old head in the Arizona scene, wearing several hats as Co-TO, community ambassador, owner of Maypulcord, and a long time AZ PR member. It may be hard to believe for some, but, this is Zora’s first appearance on the Top 50 Rankings. This Season, Zora collected wins on Zora(TK), Mentos, and many more (even collecting a non-RCS win against Koda). His improvement throughout the years has begun to skyrocket his Maypul to all new heights, with experience and an analytical approach to the game colliding with more travel experience than ever before. Zora aims to continue this trend with his goal of traveling the nation and bringing back knowledge to his own local scene. Be on the lookout for this Maypul in Season 7.

 

 

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 9

Season 6 RCS Top 50 – Introduction

By SBS — May 16, 2022

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 6 (September 2021 – April 2022) was an exciting return to form, with our first offline Majors since COVID in 2020 sharing the spotlight with four unique online events.

Our first event back, Riptide, shattered records in both offline attendance and in registration speed – capping our 256 player Rivals singles event just hours after it was announced! Meanwhile online events let players all across the country get involved, with new competitors and old vets alike. The RCS Finals at Genesis 8 saw a delay from its initial January date due to COVID concerns before finding a new home in April and becoming our largest in-person finals to date.

The power rankings this year are a unique case from previous seasons due to the balance of online and offline events in a truly hybrid season. Our adaptation of mixing four online events and three offline events during the post-vaccine period of the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped Season 6 into a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Our wonderful community full of competitors, tournament organizers, volunteers, commentators, and spectators have made Season 6 an incredible ride. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of such a beautiful and complicated era of Rivals.

Before we delve into the rankings this year, here’s an introduction on how the list was formed along with our events list and hidden bosses.

View more articles in the Season Six NA Rankings Series:

Player Qualifications

Our goal for Season 6 initially was to require a minimum of three events in order to be ranked on this year’s Top 50. Given the difficulty of accurately placing players with only two events under their belts, and the variety of available online events, this seemed like the best option. We announced every event that would count towards the rankings at the start of the season, but an unexpected delay to our Finals at Genesis 8 threw a wrench into things.

After some deliberation, it was decided that players who would miss our Finals due to the date change should not miss out on their opportunity to be ranked. The decision was made to lower our required events to two, since players could have been counting on their ability to attend Genesis 8 as their last event.

For the Season 6 RCS Rankings, we only considered players with two or more events from the list below to be eligible for the Rivals Top 50.

Season 6 Ranking Events
Riptide
RCS Hot Springs
Heat Wave 4
RCS Fireworks
RCS Melody
RCS Crystal
Genesis 8

Methodology

This year we brought back the panel system from Seasons 3, 4, and 5 with a bit of a twist to accommodate the hybrid season. Players were ranked based on their best three eligible events, including consideration for their wins and losses to land them at their results. Disqualifications from losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement. Finally, players who entered the minimum number of events (two) were scrutinized more heavily than others due to the lack of data to go off of. In the end, neither the considerations for DQs, nor the minimum event considerations affected player placements too heavily.

Events carried the same weight potential between online and offline except for the RCS Finals, which was weighted heavier due to the high stakes and the fact that it was our grand finale. While the overall weight of the six majors had the potential to be the same, it was clear that some events were strictly more competitively stacked than others. The weight of events in order are as follows: Genesis 8, Heat Wave 4, Riptide, RCS Crystal, RCS Fireworks, RCS Hot Springs, RCS Melody. In general, the council favored consistency among events above individual peaks.

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 players and tournament organizers from across the country in order to accurately represent the various regions of North America: Jack Ryan (formerly EDC | Junior), MSB, Nbad, Protagify, SBS, and Sparx21. Additional data was provided by Menace13, who had no input regarding final placements of the Top 50.

We’d like to thank all of our panelists for dedicating their time to putting this together for the community, as well as Tax1k for our sleek Season 6 steampunk player cards, and CyberHex for additional graphic design support.

Hidden Bosses

Players given the title of Hidden Boss were recognized by the panel as major threats to tournaments this season that just didn’t quite meet the requirements to be ranked.

Bullets, Halite, Lattim, Proux, Squanto

Categories: Announcement, Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

Get Ready for the RCS Finals at Genesis 8

By George — March 22, 2022

We’re just about a month out for the Rivals Championship Series finals and we can’t wait to return to the big stage! The historic finals event was on hold due to COVID concerns, but things are launching back into action on April 15th – 17th where our Season 6 Champion will be crowned.

This event has tons in store and plenty to look forward to for players and spectators alike. In addition to a player being crowned the season 6 champion, they’ll also be getting the lion’s share of our massive compendium pot bonus – currently sitting at over $12,000 dollars thanks to our amazing community.

Make Your Finals Preparations!

  • 1. For those planning to watch from home make sure to stay tuned for the final stream schedule coming soon. We’ll be announcing the stream schedule along with commentators in the coming weeks. Due to the date change, we have also had several commentator slots open. If you’d like a chance to do commentary for Rivals at Genesis 8 please apply via our commentary and volunteer form.
  • 2. For those attendees and competitors coming in person – please double check your travel information, event registration, and hotel reservations to ensure everything goes smoothly. Due to the date change we urge you to double check that your reservations are all set for the correct dates: April 15th – 17th.
  • 3. Familiarize yourself with the rules. This year will be the first year that a finals event has special character legality rules. A new section has been added to account for the Workshop Character Pack:
It was decided before Genesis 8 took place that due to the Workshop Pack release date – Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, and Mollo would not be legal by default at Genesis 8. Upon review we have decided to uphold this ruling even in light of Genesis 8’s date change. However, in the interest of allowing willing players to play the full cast – Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, and Mollo may be played by Gentleman’s Rule. This means that these characters may be chosen provided both players consent to their use. Once players agree that any one of the four new characters listed above are usable during a set, all characters are legally allowed to be used from then on for the entirety of that set. As with any gameplay rules violation, it is the player’s responsibility to stop the game immediately if an opponent is breaking the rules (e.g. playing Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, or Mollo without the consent of both players).

Get ready for the return to offline events with our biggest stakes and stage of the season with the Rivals Championship Series Finals at Genesis 8. We can’t wait to see everyone there!

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

Oceania RCS Season 6 Wrap-Up

By SBS — January 27, 2022

Season 6 of the Rivals Championship Series kicked off last September with an expansion of our Australian region to include all of Oceania. As New Zealanders officially joined the fray, players battled over four events themed after our upcoming characters, followed by a high stakes finals event that concluded this weekend. It didn’t disappoint as the Oceanic RCS saw one of its most fierce battles to date, featuring titans from events across the season.

Special thanks to @LichgoFGC for running the finals stream.

A Look Back at the Season

RCS Hot Springs
The season opener saw last year’s Champion, SNC, tear out the gates to secure his win in the biggest event of the year. A grand finals reset over OSU left Jet and Gabe smelling blood in the water at 3rd and 4th place respectively.

RCS Melody
After finding his way back to grand finals from winners side, SNC fell to Jet twice to award the legendary Wrastor his first of two victories in Season 6.


Some of the final standings for season 6.

RCS Fireworks
A return to form for Australian giant, Gabe, as he secured a flawless victory over both SNC and Jet. Gabe’s crown marked the third unique winner in three months, with one tournament to go before the RCS Finals in January.

RCS Crystal
After three events, the Oceanic region finally sees its first repeat champion. Gabe fell to Xenix in winners semis, setting up a losers run where he would eventually double eliminate Jet to take home the victory in the last regular season event of the year. Now with the finals on the horizon, Gabe managed to secure two RCS victories while sticking to the Elemental theme of each event.

The Season 6 OCE Champion

The RCS Finals
With the regular season out of the way, Jet had earned his spot at the top of the RCS leader-board, while Gabe remained the only player in the region to secure multiple championships.

The stage was set for an epic finale between the two players, with Jet and his teammate, Random7Flame striking an early blow with a victory in doubles on day 1. Day 2 did not disappoint, because this time it was Jet’s turn to get upset in winners semis, allowing for a losers run of his own. Jet managed to drive home back to back set wins over Gabe to top off his RCS mastery of Season 6.

Our OCE Champion – Jet!

After the dust settled, we reached out to our champion for a brief interview regarding his journey:

SBS: How did you first hear about Rivals and get into the scene as a competitor?

Jet: Before Rivals, I had given a few different games a go as a competitor, Battlefield 3, Dota 2, and Rocket League, with varied success. So when I learnt about Rivals of Aether from a youtube video back in 2015, I thought it would be a great game to try my hand at competitively. Played around with all 8 characters at the time, and found Wrastor to be my favourite to play,

Stuck with it ever since.

SBS: How long have you been playing Rivals for? How long did you play the game before entering brackets?

Jet: Just over 6 years now, having started playing Rivals around late 2015/start of 2016. I believe the first bracket I played was Dreadful Duels XII, which was hosted January 14th, so around 3 weeks of playing before I entered my first bracket…

A blast from the past…

SBS: This season was hard fought from beginning to end, with tournaments won by three separate competitors. What was your most difficult hurdle on your climb to the top?

Jet: Physical health has been my biggest hurdle. Like many others I have dealt with my fair share of hand and arm injury, a product mostly from practicing guitar as much as I do. It is a struggle to play some tournaments when your arms and hands are aching, so in the lead up to RCS finals I took a break from playing guitar and went to the physio to get myself fixed up. Of course I ended up getting covid a half a week before the RCS finals. But it wasn’t enough to hold me back..

SBS: One of your toughest hurdles this season looked like the return of former Australian champion, Gabe. His first active season since Season 3 came with a fourth and two first place finishes during the regular season, before ultimately leading to a grand finals clash with you in the RCS Finals. What was your approach to overthrowing him with the championship on the line?

Jet: Most of my friendlies have been played against Gabe this season, we have adapted a lot to each other’s playstyle and pushed to improve our gameplay. With so many games, there comes a lot of mental notes on how they play. So I went into Grands feeling confident that I would have the answer to his overall gameplan, and that clearly showed in the Grand Final Set.

SBS: Now that you have won your first RCS Finals event on top of owning the regular season leader-board for a second consecutive year, what are your competitive goals moving forward?

Jet: I have had my sights set on EU & USA for a little while now, I really believe I would put up a great fight overseas, and learn a lot from different playstyles and metas. But most likely won’t be able to visit for a few years due to funding. So in the meantime I think I’ll just keep winning here in Australia..

——–

Stay safe and thanks for playing! Keep an eye out for more 2022 official season news this spring.

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 0

Heat Wave 4 Wrap-Up

By SBS — November 19, 2021

Season 6 of the Rivals Championship Series continued with the return of Heat Wave! After two years the biggest Rivals focused event in the world was back and better than ever with an amazing new venue and drastically upgraded production for this 102 entrant event. Rivals players across multiple continents converged to bring us the fiercest competition from start to finish that Rivals has ever seen.

VODS

As always we start with the VoDs in case you’ve managed to avoid spoilers so far. There are a lot to unpack between the two streams dedicated to Rivals and even side events such as Lethal League Blaze by Reptile Games. All Rivals VODs are now up on our Official YouTube channel, while all other games can be found on the AZ Rivals Youtube. The entire event was streamed on our Official Twitch and the AZ Rivals Twitch by Arizona’s own SAK Gaming and Frame Sync Media.

Rivals Singles

Rivals Doubles and Workshop

Windjammers / Slap City / Lethal League Blaze

Pre-Heat Wave Local: Rivals Singles

 

TOP 8 HIGHLIGHTS

If you’re interested in a quicker watch, check out our official highlight videos for Rivals Singles Top 8 and Workshop by LilFox15.

 

Photos

Three separate photo albums of the event are available to the public! Keep an eye out for a special video being put together by On The Rocks Productions in the coming weeks.

THE CHAMP

Top 8 of Heat Wave! Photo by Xenos.

Congratulations to the Heat Wave 4 Champion – CakeAssault! CakeAssault made a phenomenal run through losers bracket, with several Game 5 sets to grind his way to Grand Finals and secure the crown after a bracket reset.

SINGLES RESULTS


Full Standings >

WORKSHOP RESULTS


Full Standings >

DOUBLES RESULTS


Full Standings >

We hope you enjoyed the the return of Heat Wave! Make sure to sign up or join us on stream next weekend as well for the continuation of our monthly Online RCS. It’ll be the third online event of the season with a brand new skin reward: RCS Season 6 Fireworks.

Categories: Community, Esports, Events, News | Comments: 0

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