Week Three of the ESL Rainbow Six Challenger League Open Qualifiers are upon us, and now nearly halfway through the qualifiers, it’s time to start eyeing up the teams who may find themselves in the top 16, passing through the gleaming doorway into the Closed-Bracket Qualifiers to come later. From there, the top 4 will be joining the relegated Pro League teams Gifu and PENTA, along with Team Secret and OrgLess, in the Challenger League, aiming to earn their way into Pro League Season 12.

So basically, the talent rising through the ranks of the Open Qualifiers at this stage could be the stars of next season. And they’re worth watching out for.

Firstly, let’s start with Trust Gaming Challenger League.

Representing the Netherlands, Trust Gaming Challenger League ended the second week of Open Qualifiers at the top of the leader board with 110 points and a qualification under their belt. Fans of the Benelux League will be familiar with this roster, and their first-place successes for the last two seasons of the league. But long-term fans may not be quite so used to seeing the face of ex-Chaos Esports Club player Next1 on the team as well.

TGCL finished Week One at a respectable 7th place, but were however able to show an improvement their opponents lacked in Week Two, allowing them to rise in the ranks as others seemingly dropped lower and lower. And now that they’re locked in for the Closed Qualifiers, it’s just seeding left to worry about.

But this team have a trick up their sleeve: This week Trust Gaming’s analyst and Rainbow Six observer Easy tweeted the map pick statistics from the Challenger League Open Qualifiers so far, which showed clearly Coastline (12.4%), Villa (10.2%) and Bank (7.8%) as the smallest slices of the map pie. But when we look at the maps that TGCL have been dominating on? Coastline. Villa. Bank.

In fact, of the nine rounds the team played in Week Two, three were on Bank, three were on Villa, and two were on Coastline. The remaining map was Border, the fourth least-picked map according to Easy. What this suggests is that TGCL have strengths on maps which other teams struggle to play as effectively, giving them an instant advantage. What’s more, is that if TGCL are even better on the more popular, meta maps, such as Clubhouse or Kafe Dostoyevsky, they force their opponents into an impossible scenario: choose to ban the maps you don’t like, and risk us dominating you on the ones that have the clearer, easier, more meta strats, or ban those maps that you’re likely stronger on, and risk putting yourself into a situation where you feel less confident, just to try and throw us off.

Clearly, Trust Gaming Challenger League have a strong-arm on map dominance. And there’s still three weeks of qualifiers for them to go. Week Three will be all about whether they can keep it up, and show consistency in outplaying their opponents on the less popular picks.

Trust Gaming are used to sitting in first place: their victory in the ESL Benelux League Season 3. Source: https://thatsgaming.nl/trust-gaming-wint-rainbow-six-benelux-league-season-3/

The Kings of Consistency: Los Pollos Hermanos

From a pre-existing team championing their region, the next team on the radar is one who comprises of a mishmash of European talent; Germany, Poland, Denmark, the UK, and Austria all being represented on Los Pollos Hermanos. It’s not all random though, as at least three of these players have history on Benelux team Epsilon Esports.

Finishing Week One of the Open Qualifiers in fourth place, LPH kicked off the season on a high. But it was a high that continued into the second week as well, as they finished at third place for the week and fourth overall. In fact, none of the teams who had scored above them in Week One did so again in Week Two, suggesting a solid consistency that could be key to carrying through the remaining weeks.

When looking at the tiebreaker scores — which uses the Buchholz system of adding up the wins of the team’s opponents — we can easily see that LPH have had one of the highest in both weeks: 51 in Week One and 50 in Week Two. What this means contextually is that the teams to whom LPH have lost have been the teams with the highest wins, ie the best teams in the competition. And it’s true; in Week One LPH lost to Tekk10 Gaming and CrowCrowd, and in Week Two they lost to Yarik Esports and Trust Gaming Challenger League. These were all teams who scored above Los Pollos Hermanos at the end of their respective weeks.

This looks good for LPH, right? Well, sort of. It keeps them very comfortably in the top 16 of the Open Qualifiers teams. But what happens when they want to ensure their top 4 position after that? Right now they have 80 points on the board, but Yarik Esports are creeping up steadily behind them in fifth place at 71 points. If LPH’s successes are skill-capped by consistently losing to the top three or four teams, they could find that, while Open Qualifiers may be a breeze, the closed bracket that comes later may be more of a struggle.

This is why Los Pollos Hermanos are a team to watch this week: not only are they interesting in their non-homogeneous roster composition and their success in the competition so far, but they are going to have to show improvement and fortitude against the teams like Trust Gaming and CrowCrowd if they are to convince anyone — including themselves — that they have what it takes to make it into the Challenger League this season.

In the old roster’s shadow: Fierce Esports

To say they’re in the old roster’s shadow is maybe a bit harsh; Fierce Esports consists of solid players who have histories in solid teams. But the knowledge that last season the team made it to the Closed Qualifiers will be a weight that’s either a blessing or a burden.

Right now, however, the team are sat in 14th place in the Open Qualifiers. Yes, they’re in the key top 16, but is that enough for them? It doesn’t take a competitor to know that the answer to that question is likely a resounding no. So why are they worth watching?

Players on this team, who have come from successful teams like MnM Gaming and Trust Gaming, are not the sort of players who enter into the Challenger League Open Qualifiers for a laugh. But not only this, recent Twitter posts from team member Prox have shown the team seeking out a new coach to take the team forward. With this post being from the end of Week Two, it suggests the team are keen to make large improvements to push themselves forward in the competition. With also a spot open for a new player, there could potentially be some changes being made to the roster. Synergy must be developed, strats must be solidified, and Fierce Esports are right on the line of pass or fail.

18-year-old team captain and ex-MnM member Kayak provides both experience as well as young leadership to the team. Can he lead them to greatness? Source: https://twitter.com/KayakR6

The real test of their abilities will come as they creep up the Swiss rankings. Finishing in 8th on the Week Two leader board, Fierce boasted a 7–2 win-loss ratio, but were not quite boasting their tiebreaker score of 30. In fact, so far in the competition, Fierce have played only two other top 16 teams: Tesia Esports and IziDream. And they lost to both of them.

So the big question marks for this team going forward are about whether they can consolidate their skills to push themselves ahead and become a true competitor to those teams at the top of the leader board; can they make changes to the team that increase their skill cap, and can they implement those changes fast enough that an improvement is seen before the end of the Open Qualifiers? Or is the aim going to be to coast into the double bracket and give it their all then? Will they have the power to survive on a short straw seeding?

With young yet experienced talent on the team and a thirst for improvement, Fierce Esports are the third team to look out for going into Week Three. Not because they’re going to shoot up to first place, but because their planned changes and determination could see them steadily rising in the ranks of the Challenger League Open Qualifiers.

To Week Three!

And thus we conclude my list of teams to look out for in Week Three of the Challenger League Open Qualifiers. I wanted to have a sample of both top teams, and teams who may have an interesting story developing, with an aim to maintain their top 16 positions and make improvements to succeed in the long term. After all, while it would be nice to make it into Pro League Season 12, if you need an extra season to develop yourself fully, then so be it. Part of the enjoyment of T3 esports is baring witness to the learning and growing of these teams and players who go on to become the stars of T1.

Be sure to catch the Rainbow Six Challenger League Open Qualifier broadcasts this week from 18.00 GMT Monday-Wednesday to see who tops the scoreboard for Week Four.