The first Oceanic league has just gone live, as ozfortress Heroes League launched earlier today. Heroes League has 44 teams competing over six weeks of Swiss-system, going into a two-day double-elimination final to determine the winning team. Heroes League sees all the top Oceanic teams competing, with names such as Chiefs ESC, Untitled Spreadsheet, Tainted Minds, JAM, and Avant Garde expected to do well in the table.
The league comes from the same organisation who run the main Oceanic TF2 league, ozfortress, and aims to "promote stability in a climate of one-day cups". Heroes League has started with a $600 prizepool to be awarded to the winner of the tournament, and will be running Hero Limit 1 with Assault maps banned.
The league is structured as a Swiss-system which matches teams against opponents with similar win records, leading to close and competitive games throughout the season. This portion of the league will run from 27th June to the 5th August, pitting teams on set maps for the regular season. The ruleset for the regular season uses Timed Completion, but the playoffs will be all individually administrated allowing for Stopwatch to be used.
The top 8 teams who make it through the regular season will then be seeded into a double-elimination playoff tournament on Saturday 13th August and Sunday 14th August. The top four teams will be seeded into the Upper Bracket, while seeds five to eight will be immediately seeded into the Lower Bracket. All games in the playoffs will be BO5, with a BO7 Grand Final for the $600.
ozfortress Heroes League admin Brodogs spoke to us about the launch:
The competitive Overwatch scene has been pretty volatile since the game is new, especially in the Oceanic region where most teams did not form until release. In a climate of short competitions, we wanted to promote stable teams that can develop good strategy and execution over time. By sticking together, teams can also build their profile as players and organisations. These are all things we aim to achieve with the ozfortress Heroes League. By running a 6 week Swiss format we allow teams of all skill levels to get a significant amount of game time in against teams around their skill level, as opposed to getting knocked out in the first or second round in other single and double elimination tournaments. Letting teams schedule there own matches as opposed to forcing matches to a night lets teams be flexible and work around other tournaments as well as their own availability.
The playoffs format encourages teams to work hard for a top seed in the regular season. Every match is a best of 5 in which teams can both ban and pick maps that best suit their strengths, other than the grand finals which is a best of 7, all in a competitive Stopwatch, 1 hero limit format. We'll be sure to show the best these teams can offer with our own streaming setup. The Heroes League is just part of the ozfortress strategy to further promote the Oceanic scene. Regular news coverage and working with external sites like yourself is something we really look forward to.
You can catch all of the action on the Heroes League Twitch channel, where all of the playoffs will be covered along with key games from the regular season.
You can find more information about the league on their homepage here.
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