PINOY Wild Rift squad Rex Regum Qeon is set to face tough competition as they open their Icon 2022 play-ins campaign on Tuesday.
RRQ is composed of Keith “DevilJ” Gonzales, Sean “Helios” Miranda Palisoc, Charles “Chaazz” Esguerra, Eric “Exosen” Gubatan, Marc “Marky” Ilagan, and Mark “Maze” Galang. The squad finished third in the Wild Rift Championship SEA after falling in the lower bracket finals to Taiwanese Squad Flash Wolves.
RRQ was drawn into group B along with China second seed JD Gaming, Japan’s second seed Donuts Unsold Stuff Gaming, and Latin America’s third seed STMN Esports.
The Play-in stage will be a double-elimination bracket with only the top two squads moving to Icon’s group stage. The winners of the first series will face each other for the first seed while the two losers are automatically forced into a do-or-die series. The winner of the do-or-die faces the loser of the winners
What awaits RRQ in the play-ins
It will be a tough road for the sole Pinoy team as they face two-second seeds and a strong third seed.
Their opener STMN Esports sweep its group in the Latinoamerica Open, going 14-0 and sweeping Infinity 3-0 in the play-ins to qualify for the regional playoffs. It was here that their streak was doused by Latin America’s second Furious Gaming, sending them to the lower bracket.
In the lower bracket finals, they managed to take an early series point going 3-1, but were blanked in the latter half of the series losing the best of seven.
Following STMN will either be Donuts USG or JD Gaming depending who wins or loses that series.
Donut USG are Japan’s second seed. The squad finished 11-3 in the group stage behind a hot Sengoku Gaming. They almost beat Sengoku in the finals, coming back from a 3-1 deficit to a dominant 13-minute win in game six to force a decider. However, it was Sengoku who managed to outlast Donut USG.
Still, that was enough to give Donut USG the second seed and a play-in spot.
Lastly, JD Gaming, China’s second seed, may be the group’s scariest opponent. Horizon Cup saw the dominance of the Chinese squads in Wild Rift with this year’s batch looking to repeat.
JD Gaming wasn’t a top seed in China’s Wild Rift League (WRL). They barely secured their challenger spot after being OneChamp in a tiebreaker following stage 1. Stage two wasn’t the best either as they finished 5th with an 8-8 record.
It was in the playoffs where JD Gaming shined, being Team Weibo in round one, and favorites Nova China in round two. Unfortunately, the streak ended at the finals with FunPlus Phoenix outlasting them in a 4-1 victory.
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