The Liquid Review: May 2022

Happy Thursday folks,

As always, while the last few days of the month steadily creep by, it’s always good to stop for a moment and appreciate just how wide a net professional video games casts across the world. This month boasted major tournaments for Liquid across six different esports, giving us what I lovingly refer to as Major May.

I seriously missed a calling in graphic design.

From Apex and TFT to CS:GO and Siege to DotA, we’ll reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly for these majors, and peek into the crystal ball to see what June might look like for Team Liquid.

Two quick notes before we do, though. First, big props to Team Liquid players and personalities hosted charity streams this past month, raising $14,605.24 for the Make a Wish Foundation. Broxah, robinsongz, BSJ, Fun, and DeMusliM all helped raise more than $1,000 each (Broxah almost got to $7k!). Amid the hectic hustle and bustle of running an international esports organization with a dozen-and-a-half or so independent rosters, Liquid still takes the initiative to affect positive change in the world, from charity streams to a community-driven API food magazine.

Second, this month Team Liquid said goodbye to some really important people in the community. Tracy “Nazhjin” Parkes announced his departure in early May. Tracy was a huge part of organizing Liquid’s Race to World First event, one of the crowning achievements in his 4 years with Liquid. Evandro “Yaltz” de Cerqueira–Liquid`Legend’s analyst–also left the org in May. Yaltz was an integral part of the LoL team’s success since he joined Liquid`Academy in 2019.

Last, but certainly not least, Team Liquid parted ways with Iain “Happenstance” Christie , a community manager, project designer, and stalwart Team Liquid fan. Happenstance is a constant presence on the TL Discord during tournaments, cheering on the Cavalry at nearly every major event. He hosted LCS Tailgates, and ran many-a-marble game for fellow die-hard TL fans. It’s painful to see you all go, but we’re grateful for everything you’ve done for the best org in the world.

Now back to your regularly scheduled esports news. Now I know these recaps can run a little long, so if you want to supercharge your monthly Liquid intake more efficiently, check out these video updates from TL:DW:

That will get you the ins and outs of all things Liquid in just about 20 minutes, and you’ll get to spend time with Joey.

How can you say no to this face?

Apex

The Apex squad leads off this month’s recap because they have absolutely earned it. Nocturnal, Gildersons, and FunFPS flew to Sweden and put up the most consistent performance of any team in the international ALGS Playoffs. Over the course of three days, Liquid played an unbelievably grueling 31 maps against 39 of the best teams in the world, and stayed near the top of the standings the entire time. Fun also won the “Apex Predator” award for most eliminations.

In the final lobby, Liquid stood at the top of the table, battling back and forth with Australian squad Reignite for control of first place. Liquid was so close to the crown, but an unfortunate 19th place in the last game cleared the way for Reignite to win the final lobby. Still, Team Liquid surpassed everyone’s expectations, and brought home a cool $150,000 prize.

Even more importantly, however, Liquid’s amazing finish in Playoffs earned the team a place in the ALGS Championship, the world finals of Apex with a $2 million prize pool. The finals take place in July in Raleigh, North Carolina. The groups have already been drawn, and Liquid will begin its tournament contending with NRG, a North American favorite. While we wait for that, however, Liquid`Mendo and his band of merry memers BonusBonusBonus qualified for a show-match tournament final, the Chipotle Challenger Series. That’ll take place today starting at 19:00 EDT.

Teamfight Tactics

The artist formerly known as GV8 also put up an impressively consistent performance in the TFT World Championship. Goose finished the first day with 30 points, ranked 8th out of the 32 top players in the world. On the second day, Goose won 29 points, and ranked 7th out of the 16 competitors left, earning him a spot in the finals, where he also got 7th place. Although this seems less impressive with just eight people in the lobby, Goose becomes the first Liquid`Tactician to make it to the top 8 of an international event, and he certainly deserves his kudos, and his $12,000 prize. This world’s finish may well be the second most exciting thing to happen to Goose this year. We got a gosling on our hands!

Rainbow 6 Siege

After a dominating win at the Copa Elite Six, Team Liquid fell short once again at the Major. Liquid looked good during the group stage, winning the group and comfortably qualifying to the playoffs. The Cavalry won out a close series against a European G2 squad, and dominated the first map against the American team DarkZero. But things fell apart on Chalet, and Oregon just slipped through our fingers, giving Liquid a semi-final finish, a $40,000 prize, and a lot to think about between now and the next Brasileirão in June.

It’s easy to feel disappointed with this finish. Liquid`Siege has been chasing a Major win for years now. When you expect to be the best in the world, anything short of first feels like failure. But I think it’s important to acknowledge that objectively speaking, Liquid did very well. The Cavalry reached the semi-finals of the first international Siege LAN major with a crowd since pre-COVID. For AsK and resetz, it was their first away game ever. Did you hear the crowd roar for DarkZero?

As much as that last series against DarkZero stings, we should be proud of Liquid’s performance.

CS:GO

Liquid`CounterStrike had a disappointing May. In the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown, Liquid fell 1-2 to paiN Gaming. Even though paiN went on to win the whole event, the loss still hurts. Coming out of BLAST, it seemed hard to claim that Liquid could hang internationally if we couldn’t even win domestically.

The first two matches of Antwerp bore that out. Liquid got demolished by G2, and shown up by the one-last-dance team of Brazilian veterans Imperial. On the brink of elimination, facing three must-win best-of-three series, Liquid faced the choice of bearing down to grind out some wins, or going home. Thankfully, they chose the former, beating out 9z, Complexity, and Astralis to reverse-sweep the Challengers Stage and earn a spot in Legends. Unfortunately, the magic stopped there. Losses to Heroic and FURIA, and an 0-2 loss to Vitality spelled the end of Liquid’s major run.

Next week, Liquid will compete at IEM Dallas. With rumors of Shox’s impending departure, maybe Team Liquid can scrape together a one-last-dance of our own. The action starts next Monday, so stick around to find out.

DotA 2

While our Apex squad thrived in Stockholm, Liquid`DotA fared much less well. A hit-or-miss group stage led to a four-way tie in the group. Three of the teams would seed into the upper bracket, while the fourth started the playoff run in the lower bracket. Team Liquid had a disastrous day, going 0-3 in the tiebreakers, landing us in the lower bracket. There, we began our first series with a dominating 26 minute win, but couldn’t convert the next two, and exited the major close to dead last. Insania didn’t mince words, saying “our drafts were garbage and our play wasn’t much better.”

The real concern for Liquid’s poor finish is that it means the team didn’t earn any DPC Points towards qualifying to The International. Liquid needs to finish in the top 12 of teams to qualify directly to TI, and right now we’re 13th. There is one more DPC Tour to go, including one more major in Arlington, Texas. The dates have not yet been announced for the DPC, but the Arlington Major is set for early August, so it will have to wrap up before then. Liquid still has time to right the ship and sail into Singapore in October for the biggest esports tournament of the year, but the margin for error is getting very slim.

Age of Empires IV

Age of Empires rounds this Major May out with the sixth marquee event of the month: the $125,000 Golden League Finals. Since March, DeMusliM has grinded through weeks of massive open tournaments, placing well enough in them that he earned a spot in the Elite Playoffs with 7 other players who qualified with him. Unfortunately, DeMusliM lost his opening two matches in the group stage, making it impossible for him to qualify to the semi-finals. However, the tournament delayed the match to determine whether DeMusliM ends up 5th or 7th. Two games into his best-of-7 series with Wam01, Wam lost power due to a hurricane that caused a tree to knock out his power. The series is tied at 1-1, and it will finish up today at 11:00 EDT.

On the horizon, an even bigger event looms. Red Bull recently announced the Wololo: Legacy, an elite 16-player tournament sporting the biggest AoE IV prize pool in the game’s young history: $300,000. But the Road to Wololo begins in June. For the next four months, a series of multi-week open qualifiers will open up eight spots in Heidelberg. DeMusliM (and perhaps Kelazhur) will be hard at work getting ready for these qualifiers, keeping a level eye on the prize: a chance to compete in the first global LAN tournament for a brand new esport. The tournament will take place in the Heidelberg Castle in Germany this October.

Yeah, you read that right: the biggest AoE IV LAN so far is going to be played in a literal castle. Last year, Red Bull hosted a similar tournament at Heidelberg for AoE 2, but there were no fans present for that. I don’t know if the TO plans to change that for Wololo: Legacy, or how they’re going to work out the logistics if they do. But I don’t really care that much either. 16 elite RTS players are going to play a $300k Age of Empires tournament in an honest-to-god real-life castle. How fucking metal is that?

Rocket League

The next step of our recap journey takes us from Major to Qualifier, and I gotta tell you that something has clicked with this roster. Liquid`RocketLeague has languished all through last Fall and Winter. But Spring has brought the Cavalry a new crop of talent, and it is finally starting to bloom. After failing to qualify for the RLCS main event six straight times, Liquid broke through the barrier in the first Spring Regional in a big way, beating EG and Dignitas, both top 10 teams in the region. Liquid’s tournament ended after a hard-fought battle against Karmine Corp, landing the squad in 7th.

As promising as the first Spring Regional was, Liquid looked even better in the second, which took place last weekend. They are a stone wall on defense, and can shift to an explosive attack at the snap of a finger. More importantly, they’ve been playing together as a team. Atow, Oski, and AcroniK are on the same page, and they are racking up a massive body count because of it, including revenge against Karmine Corp., and a 4-0 sweep of the second best team in the region.

As inspiring as Team Liquid has been over the last few weeks, our best hope is that the team qualifies for the London Major at the end of June. Unfortunately, the Rocket League World Championship invites teams based on their performance for the entire year, and Liquid’s 11th hour hot streak will not be enough to overcome teams that have been winning consistently all year. So instead, Liquid has one more Spring Regional to lock in one of the five spots Europe has to the London Major. They’re sitting pretty in third place right now, and even a decent finish should lock them in.

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

After a restless month on the outside of MSI looking in, Liquid`Legends returns to the rift with a chip on our shoulders, and we’ve got what it takes to win the season. We’ve got the skills. We’ve got the determination. We’ve got the unbelievably big haircut-glow-up.

Liquid hasn’t wasted the brief hiatus between spring and summer. Instead, the squad took to Korea to sharpen their gameplay before the season starts back up again mid-June. The full schedule hasn’t been announced yet, but the format hasn’t changed from spring. Liquid will play two round-robins across 8 weeks for a total of 18 games. A top 6 finish earns the team a playoff berth, and a top 4 finish lands Liquid directly into the upper-bracket semi-finals. Liquid will need to get to the podium to grab one of North America’s three seeds to the World Championship this fall.

VALORANT

Team Liquid’s two VALORANT rosters both had a great month. Over in Brazil, Liquid won their third straight Game Changers Qualifier. The squad continued their complete dominance over the field, losing only one map across the entire event. The final qualifier takes place a week from today. Liquid has already qualified to the Brazil Series 1 tournament in July, but a little extra practice never hurt anybody.

Meanwhile, Liquid’s European VALORANT saw a major change! Coach Sliggy announced that he stepped down after the team’s time in Iceland. It was a big shock to much of the community since the team didn’t seem like it was in any particular trouble and placed well, given their expectations. A leading voice on the team since they formed as Fish123 in the beta of the game, it was unclear heading into the VCT what Sliggy’s departure would mean.

Right away, the squad would look to prove they could still win without a gigabrained coach. Swapping around roles, putting Soulcas on smokes and ScreaM on Raze, they began the VCT with a comfortable 2-0 win over BIG, and a much closer 2-0 win over BBL. The Turkish squad took Liquid to overtime on Fracture, where the Cavalry eventually eked out a 16-14 win. Liquid showed a marked improvement to their defensive half on Split, which has recently been an extremely perplexing weakness of ours. But against BBL, Liquid was able to capitalize off their strong 7-5 attack, and finish off the map 13-9.

Liquid’s 2-0 start already puts us in a good position to make playoffs, but ahead lie three strong challengers. Guild is a perennial European powerhouse. Then there’s Na’Vi and M3C (formerly Gambit) – the one-two CIS sequence that knocked us out of the qualifier for Masters Berlin last year. Like the first stage, only three teams will qualify to the international Masters tournament in Copenhagen in July. But unlike the first stage, Liquid won’t be able to count on an international crisis to make it. A fourth place finish isn’t going to cut it.

Quake

For Rapha, May was slower than expected. The QPL suspended three players from Russia or Belarus indefinitely because of the embargo placed on the countries by the United States. These suspensions canceled Rapha’s match against cypher. Coupled with Rapha’s bye week, this meant that he had only two matches this month. When he actually got to play Quake, Rapha looked good, beating world finalist RAISY 2-1, and sweeping nosfa in one close map, and two absolute blowouts. The trek through the QPL continues through June with three more matches, including one against defending world champion vengeuR.

World of Warcraft

The first week of the Arena World Championship NA Circuit begins this weekend. The tournament pits the 8 best teams in the region against one another for a share of a $350,000 prize pool. After the dust settled on all the preliminary open tournaments, Liquid held the 4th highest amount of points in the region, winning them a spot in the circuit. Over the next four weeks, they’ll complete a round-robin with the 7 other teams in best-of-five 3v3 arena matches. From there, the top 4 teams head to playoffs in July.

Smash

Team Liquid’s got a brand new Smash player!

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Riddles has joined the Cavalry. The up-and-coming Terry and Kazuya player joins Dabuz and Atelier on Liquid’s Ultimate roster. Fans got a chance to figure out the signing early through a Liquid+ experience. By solving three riddles, members of the community were able to sleuth out the signing before the official announcement. Ironically, the first one to figure it out was InvenGlobal’s Olivia Richman (a TL alum), who wrote about the potential signing more than a month ago.

Dabuz and Hungrybox both took home bronze medals this month–Dabuz at Low Tide City, and Hbox at Summit. Hungrybox was originally signed up to play melee at Low Tide City as well, but withdrew due to a family emergency. Still, Hbox was an absolute giantslayer at Summit, getting another win against Mango, and winning his first set against Plup since before the pandemic, leading to an all-time Hbox popoff.

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Going forward, Dabuz heads to Atlanta this weekend to compete in MomoCon 2022. Then in mid-June, he’s set to travel to Orem, Utah for Crown 2. Meanwhile, Hbox will go international at Battle of BC 4 in exotic Vancouver.

Atelier has a busy back-end of June planned. While Hbox goes to British Columbia, Atelier will compete in Osaka, Japan at the MaesumaTOP#8. Then he’ll head all the way to Nyon, Switzerland to enter the E-Caribana on June 19. And THEN Atelier goes straight to Daytona Beach, Florida for CEO 2022. By the end of June, our humble Pokemon Trainer will have traveled more than 10,000 miles for three tournaments.

StarCraft II

WE’VE GOT A ZERG! Polish phenom Elazer officially joined Team Liquid this month. And he started off his tenure on TL with style, joining MaNa at the 2022 ESPOT SC2 Circuit, an all-Polish minor in Warsaw, and winning the whole shebang. Normally, I don’t track minor tournaments too closely; with approximately 245,234 ESL open cups, it gets way too cluttered. But I’m pretty sure that the ESPOT is the first LAN StarCraft II tournament that Team Liquid has taken part in since the pandemic, and that is really exciting.

LOOK! PEOPLE!!!

Speaking of crowds, DreamHack Valencia will be the first major tournament to be on LAN since before the pandemic, and the qualifiers have already begun. Liquid`Kelazhur, our Brazilian Terran, came so close to making Valencia through the Latin American qualifiers, but couldn’t get past SpeCial, and ended second place in the qualifier. With only one spot available for LATAM, Kelazhur won’t make it directly into the main event. Perhaps not all hope is lost however, as it seems that there is an open tournament that feeds into DreamHack as well. It’s not clear if he will compete there, but there may still be an avenue for Kelazhur to make it happen.

Meanwhile, over in Europe, Clem, Elazer, and MaNa are in the throes of the massive 32-player group stage lasting almost two weeks. Within each of the groups, the players go through a round-robin of best-of-3 matches. The top two seed into the upper bracket of the playoffs, while 3rd and 4th place head to the lower bracket. As of now, all of Liquid’s players have a winning record in the group stage, and Elazer sits at a perfect 5-0 so far. There’s still a lot of StarCraft to go, however, and everyone on Liquid still controls their own destiny.

In the World Team League, Liquid hasn’t shown much life yet. Clem has 7 of our team’s total 9 wins, and we have yet to win a series. But in fairness, Liquid has only had three players on its roster until now. Hopefully, Elazer will be able to inject some life into the team, and turn us around for the rest of the season. Liquid still has 7 matches left to play, and only needs to finish 7th out of the 12 teams to make the playoffs.

Going forward, three of Liquid’s players will compete in the NationWars tournament running through most of June. Clem, Kelazhur, and Elazer will each represent their respective countries in a peculiar team event mixing 1v1s and 2v2s. With upwards of 35 countries sending two players each to compete, the nations will play best-of-7s through single elimination brackets until there are 16 teams left. Those teams qualify to a GSL-style group stage, where eight teams will qualify to a single-elimination playoffs. There, the remaining teams will play their first round online, but the semifinals and grand finals will take place in the O’Gaming studio in Paris offline.

PUBG

Liquid`PUBG pulled a rabbit out of a hat at the PCS6. The cavalry began the tournament with three strong games, and then laid an absolute egg for the rest of the week, placing relatively poorly with only a few kills (if any). We were able to interrupt this cold streak with one impressive chicken dinner in Round 11, but otherwise, Liquid just looked flat. Still, the first three games and the chicken dinner were enough to land us in the middle of the pack.

In the second week, however, Liquid was back in form. The squad grabbed two chicken dinners, a second place, and three third places, and racked up 25 more kills than the previous week. Altogether, Liquid was able to finish the tournament in 5th place, earning $18,000, and enough PGC points to keep us in the driver seat towards qualifying to the Global Championship in November.

In an uncannily similar event as the O’Gaming NationWars for StarCraft II, PUBG has organized the Nations Cup from June 16-19 in Bangkok. The tournament is kind of like the All-Star game that a lot of regular sports leagues use to split seasons in half. Both mxey and vard will represent Finland and the United Kingdom, respectively this month. They’ll duke it out with each other in the True Icon Hall for 20 maps, fighting for a share of a whopping $500,000 prize pool, which frankly, is way more than I expected for this kind of event. Once again, LAN is back, and if the venue is any indicator, there’s gonna be a crowd!

My new favorite pastime is googling esport venues

Fortnite

After another round of extremely complicated qualifiers, the dust has settled, and Team Liquid will send four representatives to the Fortnite Champion Series Grand Finals. Persa, Suetam, and Seeyun in Brazil, and Stretch in North America each won a spot with their respective duo partners by placing in the top 5 of the initial round of qualifiers. That meant that they were able to skip the semi-finals and seed directly into the Grand Finals for their respective regions. Liquid’s Pulga from Brazil and Scoped from North America made it to the semi-finals, but were unfortunately unable to earn a spot in the grand finals. The finals will take place online this weekend, and Team Liquid and their duos will all be aiming for a share of more than $1 million in prizes between the two regions.

Hearthstone

Bunny broke into the Top 16! In a tournament with more than 400 competitors, in a game that can sometimes depend on RNG, Liquid`Bunnyhoppor was able to climb all the way to the sweet 16 of the third Masters Tour: Voyage to the Sunken City. Even with the impressive finish, Bunny wasn’t satisfied with his performance, but he and Deaddraw will still have opportunities to place even higher over the next two Masters events. The fourth tour–Vashj’ir–will take place at the end of next month, from June 30 – July 3, so be on the lookout for more details next month!