Welcome to the first week of Team Beyond Power Rankings! Every Monday (this week’s rankings are admittedly one day late), a power ranking of the Top 8 Halo teams in the world will be posted based on how the power rankers believe those teams would stack up against each other in a LAN environment while taking into consideration how those teams performed in scrimmages, online tournaments, and LAN events that took place within the past week.

As of right now, the power rankers include three Team Beyond staff members (myself, Clicked, and Infinity), HCS stats-guru Tormented, and the beloved HCS commentator Richard Simms. The final power rankings you will see each week reflect the average of all submitted power rankings.

Halo World Championship Power Rankings – Week of February 29th through March 6th

#1 Counter-Logic Gaming | SnakeBite, Royal 2, Frosty, Lethul

If you’re surprised to see CLG in the top spot you might want to get your eyes checked. In the past week, the NA Regionals winners faced off against the rest of the Top 8 teams in various scrims and in the ASTRO Spartans 4v4 online tournament. CLG was able to accumulate 71 wins and 10 losses during that stretch, including a 3-0 sweep of Renegades in the finals of the ASTRO Spartans tournament. Needless to say, CLG is the favorite to take home 1st place at the Halo World Championship 2016.

#2 Evil Geniuses | Snipedown, Roy, Lunchbox, Commonly

The X Games Gold medalists started off this power ranking period a little slow, as they were only able to take 2 games out of 13 against CLG and split four games with bottom-ranked eLevate in scrimmages earlier last week. Since then, they have turned it around and have gone 48-21 against the rest of the HWC-bound NA teams, including their most recent scrimmage against Renegades in which they only dropped a single game out of eight. If any team were to challenge CLG for 1st place at the Halo World Championship, it would be Evil Geniuses, and luckily for them there is still a little under two weeks for them to prepare and improve.

#3 Renegades | Ninja, Spartan, Victory X, Stellur

Renegades are another team that was able to bounce back from a slow start during this ranking period. Excluding their first scrimmage of the week against eLevate in which Renegades took all six games, the team went a combined 8-22 in three scrimmages against CLG, Cloud 9, and Evil Geniuses. The team impressed the power rankers this week with their performance in the ASTRO Spartans 4v4 tournament, in which they were able to best Team Liquid (3-1) and Allegiance (3-2) before meeting CLG in the finals (0-3). However, Renegades were the team this week to pull the most games from CLG in scrimmages, despite that number being only 3 games out of 13.

Check out Renegades’ match against Counter-Logic Gaming from last weekend: Grand Finals

#4 Allegiance | Naded, Suspector, El Town, Cratos

At first glance, Allegiance appears to have performed better in the past week against the top 8 than Renegades have, with Allegiance boasting a record of 33-23 and Renegades with a record of 38-44. A closer look reveals that Renegades have actually gotten the better of Allegiance in the two times they’ve faced off, with a scrimmage score of 8-5 and the aforementioned 3-2 series win for Renegades in the semifinals of the ASTRO Spartans tournament. Allegiance fans are surely hoping that the team is able to return to top form and perform at the levels they were during the Halo World Championship Online Qualifiers.

#5 Denial eSports | Contra, Huke, bubu dubu, PreDevonator

The team that shocked the world at U.S. Regionals with a 2nd place finish seems to have cooled off in the past week. In their four encounters against the rest of the top 8, Denial has gone a combined 9-26 including an 0-2 defeat against Allegiance that included a 100-36 Plaza Strongholds and a 50-33 Eden Slayer. in the ASTRO Spartans tournament. Denial will have to prove that their Regionals performance was more than just a fluke, and that they indeed do perform much better in a LAN environment when they have veteran player Elumnite behind them, as some have suggested.

#6 Cloud 9 | Assault, Cloud, Hysteria, Danoxide

The team formerly known as Triggers Pound had a somewhat exciting week, announcing that the team had been picked up by the Cloud 9 organization. Their performance in the past week has been a little underwhelming, as they’ve only been able to come out on top in two of their encounters against other top teams. Cloud 9 faced off against top ranked CLG in a scrimmage and finished with a 1-12 score, but that shouldn’t be held against them as EG (2-11), Denial (2-11), Liquid (1-12), and eLevate (1-12) had similar results.

#7 Team Liquid | Ace, Heinz, APG, Unlegit

Although Liquid seems to get a lot of flak for not practicing enough, only three other teams had more total games played against the other top teams and those teams were CLG, EG, and Renegades, who all sit in the top three positions this week. Hopefully Halo 4 Global Champion Ace and ten time event winner Heinz can turn this team’s performance around in time for Worlds, but if this past week (and past month or two) is any indication, Liquid’s odds to make it far during the World Championship are slim.

#8 eLevate | SwiftKill, Calm, Penguin, Rayne

This team drew a lot of attention this past week following some contractual disputes with their former organization Noble. It’s hard to tell if the disputes served as a distraction that prevented the team from practicing as much as they should be or if their lack of practice stems from other reasons. In their five scrimmages this past week, they’ve only won 8 out of 44 games and failed to come out with a “win” in any of those scrimmages but were able to split two scrimmages with EG (2-2) and Liquid (4-4). The silver lining for eLevate is that they will have seasoned veteran Chig coaching them at Worlds, but only time will tell if that will be enough to help this squad do enough damage.

That wraps up this week’s Team Beyond Power Rankings. In the upcoming week, expect to see even more online scrimmages between these top teams as the Halo Worlds Championship grows closer.

Do you agree with our rankings, or do you think other teams deserve to be higher or lower? Share your thoughts in our Halo World Championship discussion thread.