Another week of Gears Esports action is in the books when it comes to Pro League and Tournament play. Throughout the matches in both respective areas, we had a lot of action that we got to witness from what we consider the norm (NRG is 3-0 in the Pro League) and some upsets (Money May losing to Gravity), but we also have a lot more news to try and catch up on. When it comes to Gears Esports, it is honestly hard to keep up with all of the results, action, drama, and plot twists that constantly happen, so welcome to The Debrief. Each week, we will try our best to sit down and catch you up to speed on Gears action in general and things that are currently happening that you might be unaware of. So let’s start off with a huge shout out and welcome back to something that the community needed.

UMG Emergence Days Tournaments

A big welcome back to Ryan Foolz and the UMG Gaming crew. Back when Gears of War 4 was at the end of it’s competitive run, the long time coach of Echo Fox Gears Team and other ventures in Esports brought back an awesome tournament that pits multiple pro teams and other time strong amateur teams into a tournament against one another. Lucky for us, yesterday was the first in the revamped series that involved competitive Gears 5 action. With first place taking home $400 and second place running away with $100. The rest of the competition leaves with nothing but what they had on the field in their matches.

The eight teams that participated in this tournament included:

Reciprocity (Franchis, Icy, RushieZ, Kenny, and PowerZ) (Ashes)
NRG (Sumuns, Xplosive, Praized, SOLURS, and MentaL) (FatalStryke)
Hive (TJForce, Jefe, Tidy, Noey, Demise) (Crazy Train)
Don’t Know (Toysxldier, Jerppy, Zerptingg, Yogurt, and Toti)
Estral Esports (Crack, Fearzly, Reflame, Kardia, and Addvers) (Involving)
Gods (Speedy, Sleepytime, Noxious, Ffragou7, and Kyle) (Eskamani)
Ghost Gaming (Monkyz, Sleeafer, ChaoZ, Identivez, and Dezo) (Demize)
EGYX Esports (Neero, Toxiq, Xploidz, Qoajiz, and Shoackwave)

The above order of the teams and rosters that are laid out, is the final standings of the tournament. Meaning if you didn’t catch the high octane action last night (specifically the Grand Finals), you missed out on a classic battle of NRG against Reciprocity that ended with the later winning Map 3 on Vasgar. So say what you will about NRG being the big bad wolf (rightfully so with their dominance in the scene), but Reciprocity was able to knock on the door of opportunity and once again, show that other teams can dethrone the long reigning champs of Gears of War 4 in the new title. Please make sure you tune in to the next UMG Emergence Days Tournament with Ryan Foolz next week at www.twitch.tv/UMGEvents.

The Daily Amateur

Another new feature within my articles will pertain to the amateur teams that are out their battling every week in the NA Fall Quarter Tournaments. This will serve as an update to some of the things we saw this past tournament. Whether it be standings update, drama, or pertinent information you need to know as you play with your team, we got you covered in this section of our Debrief. To begin, let’s start with the drama.

First note to all Amateur Teams: Please for the love of you mother, father, family, teammates, and sanity…. READ THE DAMN RULE BOOK! Sorry I had an outburst there, but I had multiple teams contact me about the Challenger Point Standings at the end of the tournament Sunday (yes, I’m insane enough to update the totals throughout the day and reorder them). Although I appreciate the conversation and other players making sure I did the math correctly, this isn’t about the good citizens of Gears checking my facts (which I appreciate).

It is about the few teams last week that signed up as a different team name without talking to PGL administration. Speaking about HydraGG – Fight Back (which knocked my team out of the tournament and more on them later) and Animocity Gaming – Goonigans. Both of these teams didn’t go through the proper channels and although they didn’t create an issue with rosters, they didn’t have PGL administrators change their prior tournament team name to the new one. Instead, they just created an additional team (with the same roster) and now have two different teams showing on the PGL standings. So please, take the time, read the rules, and understand the circumstances if you don’t follow the stated information. Speaking of rules:

The Man Who Played Twice

Fight Back beat my team fair and square during last week’s tournament (7-4 on Exhibit) to knock us out. We were delayed for about 40 minutes waiting for our match to start (which alone should have brought on a DQ), but I like playing against good talent and usually stay motivated to play. It was an overall exciting game and one that went back and forth for a bit until they pulled away with a satisfying victory. However, it was brought to my attention after the game was finished, that a player (one AwareKitten3075) was someone that has played Gears for many years. Apparently Musikz was making a come back with the Fight Back roster. That’s a cool story, until you realize that Musikz went against PGL Rules and played on two rosters in the same tournament (looking into the other team he played with and will update later), just under different names.

6.3. Roster Rules states that “A Participant (Player, Coach, or Team Manager) can only be on one Team for a single Competition. For instance, a single Participant cannot be on one Team as a Player, and another Team as a Coach, Player or Team Manager in the same Online Tournament.”

So in theory, Musikz shouldn’t be playing on two teams at all. The loophole that was taken in this situation though, was he played as two different gamer tags. Even then, there was originally a clip that floated around with him stating “I can’t believe I’m playing with two teams in the tournament today. It’s crazy.” as he was going against on Exhibit. However, the video on demand and clip associated with the tournament have since been deleted and removed from the public eye, so back no proof this time around.

With all of that information to take in, just one word of advice. When teams are late, just start to report the game as a no show. It isn’t worth anyone’s time anymore to wait for more than a half hour to start a game because someone is bending the rules to play on two teams, the player isn’t home to run the game, etc. We need to start holding all players and teams accountability for being on time and respectful to grow.

Last Tournament Incoming

Travel Awards Incoming

We are close to the conclusion of the Fall Quarter Tournaments for Travel Rewards. With this Sunday’s tournament being the last one that will go towards travel rewards, we can come to the conclusion that Glory (440 Points) no matter what happens in this last tournament, will be one of the two teams receiving travel coverage. The other team looks likely to be Pablos (400 Points) no matter which way you slice and dice it. The only way another team than Pablos wins the second spot for travel coverage is if Money May (220 Points) wins the overall tournament on Sunday AND Pablos has a no show to the tournament or finishes Top 32. So when it comes to the top rosters, we pretty much have solidified them. Now let’s dive a bit deeper into some of the juicier questions.

From Six to Twenty One

Looking at the current standings, you have teams going from sixth place through twenty first within a range of sixty five points from one another. This weekends tournament can cause a shake up in the standings, which will be huge for the teams traveling to events for seeding purposes. So look out for the many teams jockeying for position as we come around the final turn in the online tournaments for the quarter.

“What The Hell Is That?” Logo Challenge

Let’s end this version of The Debrief on something we as a community have spoken loud about since it was announced. Dare I bring the attention onto the San Diego Pro Circuit Announcement……. SHARK!?!?!? Alright, truthfully speaking, this is a blunder. Nothing about this logo and art looks approachable for any Gears player to talk about, wear, or even support. The truth is, this looks like what I expect my students to produce in one of their first assignments in Adobe Illustrator when they truly have not an idea on what they are trying to produce, but more worried about understanding the user interface. With this, I was hoping to build up some momentum and for fun, ask community members for a challenge, to put together a logo for the San Diego Open that they believe would of been a better fit. So whether you use Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator (I love Vector work infinite amount of times more), MS Paint, Gimp, hell, just anything, I want to see your artistic talents on display. Please if you want to give it a shot, put something together and send it to me through Twitter at JipperyMcCloud or send it to my email jipirishmccloud@gmail.com.

#CaseClosed

Thanks for reading through this edition of The Debrief. We hope to bring you more insight, news, conversations, and challenges in the future for Gears 5 Esports and just the game in general. Tune in next time for the latest news, tournaments, and announcements. Which speaking of announcements, I’m working on making a mini online tournament platform of my own through this website. I got some debugging and testing to do, but once it is in an area I feel comfortable enough with to have folks test it out, we will put together a special event for it. So stick around for more news. Follow me on Twitter, Twitch, Facebook, YouTube, and make sure to bookmark this page to stay on top of it all! Until next time…..

#getjipped