This Sunday November 23, the Halo Championship Series preseason begins! The preseason will kick off with the first online tournament hosted by ESL. To register for the HCS, head here. Here's a breakdown of the official HCS map and game type combinations, as well as the detailed game type settings. (Note: These settings are subject to minor changes throughout the season, as we'll be working with the community as well as pro players in an effort to aim for the most balanced and competitive settings)

The official HCS maps and game types have undergone some minor tweaks to help improve balance and gameplay (modified initial spawns and barrels set to never respawn on Lockdown, etc), and we'll be looking to implement some of these into the other playlists shortly.

We've also taken some feedback from the community and pro players from the Launch Invitational and the HCS playlist to improve these game types. We've changed the score to win and time limit on King of the Hill, updated the bomb reset time to 30 seconds for all Assault game types, and updated the score to win to 5 for Warlord Assault. We’ll be updating the HCS playlist shortly to reflect these updates. To download the official HCS game types, simply add "Official HCS" to your Xbox One friends list. Shortly after, you should see this gamertag appear on your roster within Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Just press A on the gamertag, and head over to file share.