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RGL Invite S3 Team Introductions and Power Rankings

RGL-Invite

   Wall   - 5/30/2019
RGL Invite Season 3 Team Introductions

With the second ever season of RGL HL concluding, we soon are kicking off with the third season of this format in this league. With many returning teams as well as new faces, this season of Invite is set to be one of the most competitive and tightly-contested groups that highlander has seen in a while. Which teams will be in the running to take home the $1000+ prize pool? Below is an in-depth look of all the teams headed into the upcoming season as well as what is to come down the road.


Kids Next Door

  • b4nny
  • habib
  • obliv
  • Jarrett
  • Kresnik
  • scratchy
  • Nursey
  • bo4r
  • Dimento

KND is returning to Invite for its third straight season, this time without the preseason theatrics of offclass rosters that survive until week 2 and throw off other Invite teams in the process. They’ve cut to the chase this time around, committing to a roster similar to what we’ve seen KND (and its spiritual hybrid/predecessor, IRENE from S1) have in past playoffs. This team hasn’t scrimmed at all during preseason, but they don’t necessarily need to: every person on this team has won either RGL or UGC highlander before, and with best-in-class players on at least half their team, KND’s roster is an absolute powerhouse. KND won last season of Invite after beating out Rewind in Grand Finals, but not without its problems - usual KND demo Bowl got himself a ban that extends into the first week of this season due to scheduling disputes. However, Jarrett is a worthy replacement- he’s both played and main-called on previous iterations of KND with resounding success.

Beyond that, the rest of the combo obliv, Kresnik, and Nursey are all fantastic players who can get back into the rhythm of the game with ease. Kresnik is dominant on pootis and is an exceptionally knowledgeable highlander player. Nursey is hands-down the best medic in Invite, and has held that title for years as well. Flank b4nny and habib already know how to synergize, and pick classes bo4r and Dimento are nothing to sneeze at either.

There are a couple weak spots on KND, but it definitely has nothing to do with the team’s individual or mechanical ability. b4nny, obliv, Jarrett, Kresnik, Nursey, and Dimento are all talkative players, so other teams could benefit from taking advantage from their very loud comm environment. And, of course, early matches against KND may be close due to the fact that they’ve scrimmed once in preseason. However, the amount of raw talent on this team is unrivaled by any other in Invite, meaning they’re definitely still the team to beat.

I fear this team. I really do. In fact, I think most players in Invite fear this team. However, that doesn’t mean they’re unbeatable - a lot of the players on this roster are returning after some form of hiatus, and so just like every other team, KND will have some work to do with rebuilding coordination and ironing out their plans for each map. Because of that, they might have a rough Week 1, but based on matchups, it shouldn’t be too rough.

Power Ranking: 1?

I’d give them a confident 1 here if they were dominant in scrims, but they aren’t scrimming. This means that the ranking is based off their roster strength, not their preseason performance, and can be seen as purely speculative. This ranking is susceptible to dropping if Invidus takes rounds off them in week 1 or if they lose to The Specimens in week 2.

Players to Watch: b4nny, Kresnik, bo4r, Nursey



Apolodosh

  • dev
  • jaaay
  • River
  • Arzt Hispanian
  • Ronnie J
  • exa_
  • Wall
  • shaaayy
  • madringme

Apolodosh has been around a while and has had a lot of time to build chemistry among its core players. Most recently, AD took 3rd place in Invite Season 1 before splitting off into Rewind and The Empire for Season 2. dev, River, Arzt Hispanian, Ronnie J, Wall (das me!), shaaayy, and Madringme have all played together more than once, and new additions Jaaay and exa_ are welcome assets to round out the flank. We’ve been successful thus far in part due to our chaotic nature and disrespect for the other team, our flank’s DM, our pick class’s ability to break dead time, and our unfettered desire to take every possible fight. We also just get free kills when Arzt Hispanian closes his eyes and shoots some blind pipes, so that’s nice too.

Our chaotic nature can also come to hurt us, though - too much chaos and too many fights can leave us backpedaling and dropping players. Our not-so-quiet comms can lead to any sense of misdirection turning the craziness of the situation right back onto us. We’re nowhere near infallible, but we do have the time and the camaraderie in order to work out more of the kinks this season. Our combo and our flank can benefit by coordinating more together, and that chemistry paired with dev and Jaaay’s raw damage output may take us over the edge to remain competitive with our prime target: KND.

AD has been around for a while so we have an advantage in experience and synergy. Our DM as a whole is great, but we have definite issues with feeding and coordination. Our “rabid underdog” play style lends well to upsetting better teams, and with even more time to work on game sense and play together as a team, we’ll be able to get even stronger. We’re definitely not perfect, but I’m absolutely excited to see our boy “kpopbob” go off and to see how close we can get to the gold by the end of the season.

Power Ranking: 3

We’re doing well in all of our scrims against Invite teams, especially on payloads and nontraditional maps. We’ve traded close scrims with The Specimens, and although our losses are close so far, we haven’t yet played against KND to know where we stand with them. Scrims have shown us that we don’t have too much room for error and that mid-invite is exceptionally close: The Specimens, Team Spu, and Invidus all have the potential to beat us, especially on classic maps. Fortunately, though, we’re beginning to re-coalesce after a season apart. I tied us against The Specimens because scrims have been close and because we play each other Week 1. After those match results are out, I’ll confidently be able to place the two teams.

Players to Watch: jaaay, River, shaaayy, madringme



The Specimens

  • pablo
  • JJslim
  • Hard Ass Johnny
  • BM
  • triiiple
  • rain
  • exile
  • Fallen Lord
  • MrDelDongo

The Specimens have a vast amount of individual experience and mechanical talent, fielding top 1~3 players on several classes, like triiiple, Fallen Lord, and JJslim, to name a few. A spiritual successor to Rewind, quite a few of the players on this team have played with each other before. In preseason and early season matches where teams haven’t quite built their full coordination, their experience with each other can be the difference between a loss and a win. The bright spots on the roster come from The Specimens’ new flank, with former AD/Empire pablo excited and ready to begin synchronizing with established stomper JJslim. It also goes without saying that two-time Player of the Season Fallen Lord can reliably neutralize the enemy sniper and can make a ridiculous amount of space for his team at any given time.

The Specimens also have a balanced comm presence that can lead to some serious playmaking: JJslim and pablo are undoubtedly capable of talking with each other on flank, MrDelDongo holds down comms for pick classes, and exile offers a commanding presence on the combo. New pickup HA Johnny might also offer some tips for micro-fights and 1v1s, as he focuses primarily on winning small battles to succeed. In fact, triiiple may be the defensive element in their combo in order to complement Johnny’s aggression.

However, the team hasn’t built the coordination it needs to in order to effectively close the gap between taking rounds off their competitors and actually pulling in “W”s. They don’t quite know what they’re doing together yet, but once they start working off their strengths and building plays with each other, there’s no doubt that they’ll be a much stronger team than they are now, and they’re not exactly weak to begin with.

While JJSlim shakes his rust off and debut engineer rain does her engineer research, The Specimens as a whole would do well to focus a lot of their energy on building coordination in their combo. BM and triiiple are notoriously quiet, and Exile’s highlander medic mechanics have been untested since he won UGC Platinum on Memento Mori in early 2016. However, that open airspace might be helpful for Exile’s kritz plays, something he was known to do back then and is amped to do again. HA Johnny might take a more aggressive role, leaving medic protection duties to triiiple, which could serve to make more room in the flank, create distractions, or to just have a dead pyro for a few seconds.

The Specimens look like they’re set up for placement as long as they develop some synergy throughout the regular season, brush up on mechanics, and hold off from making any unnecessary cuts. Right now, the Specimens are small yet healthy lifeforms in a petri dish. When allowed to coexist and multiply, they could easily begin to overtake the rest of invite. If that doesn’t happen, though, they could very easily end up getting tossed out with the dead lab rats.

Power Ranking: 3

The Specimens have been doing very well on staple KOTH maps, but their payload and unconventional KOTHs have been suffering. They’ve been contending against Apolodosh on maps like koth_ashville and koth_product, but AD has been winning pl_upward and koth_cascade convincingly. However, The Specimens have been pounding every other invite team in scrims.

Players to Watch: JJSlim, triiiple, Fallen Lord, MrDelDongo



Bffl’s best friends forever (Temporary logo made by spu)

  • bffl
  • tgw
  • seven
  • fygg
  • fuzion
  • flu walrus
  • spotlightR
  • nyxi
  • spu/pajaro
  
Team Spu, otherwise known as “Bffl’s best friends forever,” or “bff-” for short, comes to Invite Season 3 with a swath of new players. Notable gamers Seven and Fygg are returning for our stinky spy main friend, but beyond that, most of these menn are new to the land of Spu. The team’s flank bffl and tgw have already proven they can carry their weight with tgw’s insane bombs and bffl’s coordination in ubers around his medic.

Maincaller SpotlightR returns to Invite to wrangle DM monster Fygg, who admittedly has some gamesense issues, but who also has a gargantuan damage output. Returnee Seven floats and protects with bffl, and Fuzion, also known as “why is there a heavy on me?” rounds out the combo.

Fluwalrus is new to the team after Yipyapper’s preseason departure, but he should have no problem keeping up due to his strong game sense and shotgun DM. nyxi is known to have massive streaks depending on how much support he gets from his teammates, and Spu is getting better at his aggressive decloaking style during loud and chaotic team fights.

bff- would do well to focus on its combo and the game objective more- everyone on Spu’s team is more than able to get the frags necessary to win, it’s just a matter of when those frags happen and why they’re happening. If this team takes extra care about how it takes its fights, I can definitely see these 9 Spuey Menn contending for placement.

Power Ranking: 4

Team Spu is winning against Invidus and is also trading rounds with The Specimens and Apolodosh in scrims. At this point, their power ranking can easily creep into placement territory as long as they figure out their new roster, especially their combo.

Players to Watch: bffl, tgw, Seven


Invidus

  • Josh
  • SmAk
  • Pnut
  • Nerdaloid
  • Chocc
  • Michael
  • Tacos
  • Jetz
  • Evil

Tacos has gathered another collection of mostly new faces to take on Invite, and by the looks of things, it’s actually going pretty well. Pick classes Jetz and Evil make enough room for the rest of Invidus to go in, and with the rest of the roster beginning to form some cohesion, things are looking bright. Unlike most of the placement contenders, Invidus prides itself on having a stronger combo- Pnut and Nerdaloid have both played in top divisions before, and new pootis Chocc is performing well after moving up from Advanced. With Pnut’s primarily defensive gameplay and Chocc’s aggression, their combo is definitely equipped to take on larger targets, especially using the help of playmakers Jetz and Evil.

On the flip side, Invidus suffers from a lack of DM output on the flank - team leader Tacos comments that SmAk and Michael have had a lot of time away from their classes and may take a while to shake the rust off. However, Josh is able to make work from his position on scout, but he may struggle to make coordinated plays due to the comm structure of his team. Evil is known for being silent but deadly, and with SmAk needing some time to catch up, he may be on his own for a little while. Normally, this wouldn’t be too big of a problem, but in an Invite season with a lot of dominant flanks, Invidus might need to keep their eyes out.

Power Ranking: 5

This team has been doing solidly against lower ranked teams like Next Gen Flow, but lately, they’ve been suffering against Apolodosh and Spu’s team. On a positive note, Invidus is the only team to have scrimmed KND thus far, losing narrowly in a couple double overtime rounds on koth_product.

However, I’m not sure how quickly this team can patch up its weak spots in order to contend for placement, especially since other teams are trying to do the same. They could get a good playoffs seeding by working over lower teams, so there’s definitely grounds for them to go further than expected.

Players to Watch: Josh, Evil



Next Gen Flow

  • Rebel
  • ?
  • Pyrrhus?
  • Meech?
  • Blue99
  • Kumora
  • tsar
  • Percy
  • Cooldog

Master of upsets Blue99 comes to lead another team this season, hoping this time to fix the issues he had in Invite Season 2. This team’s full roster has been up in the air for a while, but they’re running out of time to finalize their players for Invite this season. Part of his roster-fixing plan means that Blue99 is interested in picking up Highlander mains and non-6s players, which could bode well in coordination but not necessarily in DM.

Percy has already proven that they can do well in lower divisions, but they’re not yet tested against greats like bo4r, Fallen Lord, and Shaayyy. Cooldog is known for being either on or off - dominating the other team when he’s on and feeding his death count when he’s off. Rebel and Kumora has proven thus far that they can hang in Invite, so it’s up to the newer players to and roster additions to seal the deal.

Power Ranking: 6

Next Gen Flow has been suffering in scrims, most notably losing consistently to Invidus, and has had struggles with getting scrims against mid- and high- Invite teams at all. If the team can’t field a solid 9 soon, they might not have a shot at overtaking some of the longer-standing teams in Invite this season, but they’ll still have a chance to challenge teams like Imposters and Shroom Gang. Of course, Blue99 is the team leader who’s famous for his upset against Fast Forward (ft. Spu) last season, so anything is possible.

Players to Watch: Rebel, Percy



“Imposters”

  • asher
  • wise
  • Inquisition
  • Flare
  • Musique
  • Starfruit66
  • ZoomxZe
  • Michaelpc1
  • Dave

Morale has been high after a short offseason break for the team previously known as 42-Pence. The team has kept almost the entire roster the same from Season 2, with the only additions being asher and Dave on scout and spy respectively. Initially their offseason scrims weren’t looking too hot, but they’ve lately been contending in Advanced scrims. Flare has high hopes for his team, opting to move them up last-minute into Invite to replace the BYE week. The invite community loves to see new teams move up and stick around, so we’re all hoping for the best for this team.

Because this is a team that expected that it’d be playing in Advanced up until a couple days ago, the Impostors have mostly been scrimming Advanced teams. Due to that, it’s unknown how they’ll fare against Invite teams, but for now, they can be compared to teams like Next Gen Flow and Shroom Gang.

Power Ranking: 8

Because neither team has really scrimmed with other Invite teams, I have “Impostors” tied with Shroom Gang until they play on Ashville this week. I feel that their Ashville match will be a great gauge of their competitiveness in Invite and against each other as well.

Players to Watch: asher, Flare, Dave


lil concepts, exa_, and Micahlele helped contribute to this article.


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