RelatingWave’s consistency, The Club’s dominance, and more takeaways from Week 4 of the Fall Split
Relatingwave competing at the RLCS 2021-22 Fall Major - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Due to personal reasons, Takeaways had to take a couple of weeks off. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching, thinking, and formulating the most elite and correct takes about regions far and wide in the meantime. With the second round of Fall Cups wrapped up, let’s talk about what happened and what it tells us about the teams closing in on Rotterdam.
Karmine Corp’s Itachi - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Karmine Corp’s, and Vatira’s, risk paid off
When it was announced by Shift that the 2021-22 Karmine Corp roster would be splitting up, it was surprising, confusing, and alarming. This was a team that came one game away from knocking out the world champions on Championship Sunday and had shown in just one split that they could keep up with the big dogs in Europe and the rest of the world. It was presumed that they were going to keep getting better, but they never got the chance. Instead, the org took a swing at a full-French team that had no previous experience together and while talented, could bust as easily as it could boom.
Through two Regionals, it’s clear that KC’s rebuild was worth it. They’ve looked like the best team in Europe and perhaps the world; only Gen.G has found the same consistency as them, and while they’ve also made two grand finals, they haven’t been able to win one like Karmine has. They check all of the boxes of a great team: you have your potential best-in-the-world, carry-when-needed superstar (Vatira) your playmaking second option (Exotiik) and your fill-the-gaps and space-creation third (Itachi). Karmine Corp look and play like consistent winners, and they’ve done nothing but prove that through the early stages of 2022-23.
As big of a risk as Karmine Corp took to abandon last season’s roster, their resident superstar took just as big a risk to join them. Vatira leaving Moist was a polarizing one, moving away from a team that had looked like the best in the world for six months because of one bad result. And while Moist has looked good so far with their new roster, it’s Vatira’s new team who’s continuing the dominance of his old squad. He’s a generational talent with the chance to go down as one of, if not the, greatest Rocket League player ever. It’s a treat to be able to watch his career unfold.
The Club’s Lostt - Image courtesy of Psyonix
The Club are a legitimate LAN threat
South America has already proven that its best rosters can compete with anyone else’s: FURIA’s win at Gamers8 and their top-four placement at Worlds showed that. With FURIA leaving, though, the consensus among the community was that the two other teams that represented the region at Worlds, Team Secret and The Club, would battle for regional supremacy and the right to finish 12th place at Majors.
Through the Fall Cup, The Club has completely erased any doubts that there are other contenders in the region. They took the Fall Open smoothly, and their Fall Cup win was done in the most dominant way possible. They swept every single series en route to a perfect 21-0 record, something that has only been done once before by Tokyo Verdy in last year’s Winter Split. Even FURIA wasn’t this dominant, and it was a friendly reminder that this was two-thirds of the same roster that pushed SAM’s all-time greatest team to a Game 7 in Texas.
The difference between The Club’s relatively normal Fall Open win and their regional-wide stomp in the Fall Cup was largely in part to their newest member Bemmz looking more comfortable with his new squad. He went from a 37th-ranked 0.86 rating in the first regional to a 3rd-ranked 1.2 rating in the second. To give Lostt, already the clear-cut best player in the region, another top-three performer on his team is straight up unfair. Oh, and their teammate Aztromick ranked fourth. That’s 2021 Team Falcons-level cooking.
The Club has already proven they can perform at LAN through their performance at Worlds, and they should be taken seriously by every other team that shows up. They may have only placed 9th-12th, but they passed the eye test and ran into a red-hot squad that they nearly took down. Falcons and FURIA have already shown what a smaller region can do at a Major, and The Club are showing every sign that they’re capable of placing similarly. Here they come.
Quadrant’s RelatingWave - Image courtesy of Psyonix
Give RelatingWave his flowers
Here’s a fun stat for you: If none of G2, FURIA, Optic, or BDS are able to qualify for Rotterdam (something that’s unlikely but entirely possible), there will only be two players that have made all five LAN events since the end of League Play in Season 9. One of them is Firstkiller, considered by many to be the most talented player to ever come out of North America. The other is RelatingWave, who despite being constantly overlooked by fans of the pro scene is once again set to compete for a major championship.
Even if two of the aforementioned teams do qualify, that’ll leave Wave in an exclusive group of players, all of which made the Worlds semifinals besides him. It’s a testament to his consistency. He’s one of the most reliable rotators in the world, and has a knack for enabling others with his defense. It was beside him that Metsanauris experienced a career revival and Seikoo began the greatest rookie season in the history of the esport. Now on Quadrant, he’s helping Kash and Eekso reach the heights we’ve always known they could get to.
RelatingWave will never be mentioned among the best players in the world due to his lack of flash and hard-carry ability, but does that even matter? He plays in the most competitive region in the world and is consistently near the top. So far in the circuit era, him being on your team is a guaranteed trip to LAN. Isn’t that the goal, after all? It’s time we start treating him with the respect that should come with it.
Torsos, PWR’s keyboard player - Image courtesy of Psyonix
PWR isn’t going out without a fight
Through the Fall Open and the swiss stage of the Fall Cup, OCE looked like a one-team region. With the legendary Renegades roster broken up, an improved Pioneers dominated, winning the first regional and going 3-0 in both day 1s. They then waltzed their way into Grands with little resistance, and were promptly smoked by PWR. This wasn’t a case of the best team in a region having an off-day and dropping a close series: PWR looked like the far better team, as shocking a result as anything we’ve seen this year.
For PWR, winning this regional meant much more than just knocking off the top dogs. They were assumed to be the second-best team in OCE after picking up Fever from the disbanding Renegades, but were upset in the first regional after losing to Placeholders in the quarterfinal. In OCE, where there are only two spots for Majors, this may as well have been a death sentence, and they’d need to make serious strides to get themselves back into Major contention. They did just that, and now sit pretty in OCE’s 2nd spot.
There’s no margin of error for PWR even after their regional win: they’re only four points ahead of Ground Zero, The Lakeshow, and Placeholders for Rotterdam. They can’t afford another top-eight finish or worse, as it opens up the chance for one of those teams to make a run to the final and move ahead of them. If they can replicate their form from the Fall Cup, however, they’ll be on a trip to the Netherlands in a month’s time.
Seikoo at the RLCS 2021-22 Spring Major - Image courtesy of Psyonix
A BDS-less LAN is a real possibility
For the last two years, it’s been ridiculous to try and make a list of the best teams in the world without mentioning BDS at the top. Monkey M00n and Extra have firmly positioned themselves as the greatest duo to ever play Rocket League, capturing an absurd eleven regional tournament wins along with the Fall Major and their crowning achievement, the 2022 RLCS World Championship. Aside from a puzzling last-place finish in London, they looked like potentially the best team ever since they signed French prodigal son Seikoo in the final leg of 2021-22. So how have they gone from global champions to having shaky Major hopes in such a short amount of time?
Part of the reason why BDS hasn’t been able to post their usual results is because they keep running into great teams early: they’re 6-0 in Swiss play and their quarterfinal losses have come to the region’s current #1 and #2 seed. Is that really an excuse, though? BDS has been the team to beat in Europe since 2020, so shouldn’t they be winning against even the top contenders?
Should they flame out early again, it’ll be genuinely strange to have a Rocket League LAN without BDS showing up as the favorite, or at all. They’ve still shown that they are among the best in Europe, but they’ve never been in this situation before: backs against the wall, with serious consequences for Worlds if they don’t make it. We’ve seen BDS face down the pressure on the biggest stage of them all. This is a different pressure altogether.
Bonus: The increase in bootcamps show organizations are making RLCS a priority
One of the coolest things about last week’s European Championship Sunday was the fact that the final four teams were all playing from a bootcamp together. For a game that seems to always have people worried that it’s going to lose players and viewers and die out altogether, this is an encouraging sign that the organizations investing in the game see it as something that’s growing, not shrinking. It’s a financial investment in itself to even get the players there, and that doesn’t count orgs like OpTic who move their players to where the organization’s HQ is. They aren’t doing that for low-tier esports, and it’s an indicator that these orgs see their Rocket League teams as one of their premium rosters.