M80 kick ECL S46 NA off in dominant fashion
ESL Challenger League Season 46 North America started on the 15th of August with two of the most awaited teams to see on the server debuting, M80 and Bad News Bears. They faced Unjustified and Mythic, respectively, on day one, but the very next day had a face-off scheduled against one another.
Bad News Bears are playing with two stand-ins from the previous Take Flyte roster in order to maintain their ECL spot during the start of the season, meaning the team is not close to its full potential, and won't be for a while.
M80's ECL campaign started off against Unjustified, the former Snakes Den squad. Inferno, picked by Unjustified, had a balanced start, with M80 claiming a 9-6 lead at the end of the CT-side. It was on the T-side where Michael "Swisher" Schmid and his team ran away with the map, as they put up seven rounds with no response during the second half. M80 had yet another good T-side showing on Nuke, their pick, with the home team going to the CT-side with an 11-4 lead. Unjustified managed three more rounds before losing the map 16-7.
Mythic and BNB were playing at the same time, but by the time M80 finished its series, Mythic was already resting, and Nick "nicx" Lee was probably already hopping on DM games. The stream team completely obliterated BNB, with a 16-3 Mirage win and a 16-5 Overpass win. The only good sign for the Bears is that the permanent members managed some solid numbers, but the stand-ins left much to be desired, nicx particularly during Mirage, where the 18-year-old only managed a single kill.
M80 and BNB continued their respective trend on the following day. M80's 16-12 win on BNB's Inferno was a much better showing from Joshua "steel" Nissan's men, but the 16-2 Vertigo loss quickly brought back the demons from the day prior. This time, nicx was much more active and actually top-fragged for BNB on Vertigo with eleven kills.
The next scheduled game sees M80 take on Reason on the 23rd of August. As a reminder, this season ECL isn't operating with a two groups system, like the previous seasons. Season 46 of ESL Challenger League only features one group of 16 teams with a single BO3 round-robin format with double elimination playoffs. In this format, the top two teams will advance to the Upper Bracket semifinals, the 3rd-6th teams will go to the UB quarterfinals, and the 7th-10th teams will go to the Lower Bracket Round of 16.
