Although much has already been written celebrating the life and death of the Monthly Melee, it is important to remember that we still have one last hurrah before the series comes to an end. Overwatch esports are set to change dramatically over the coming months, so savour this weekend's action and prepare yourself for Blizzard's wild ride.

Groups

The organisers have announced their initial plans for the group stage which expected to play out this Saturday in the time-honoured Monthly Melee format.

Group A

Group B

Tournament schedule and format

  • Friday 19th May - Qualifiers
  • Saturday 20th May - Group Stage
  • Sunday 21st May - Playoffs

Qualifiers

The most recent (and welcome) change to the format has been the addition of the Friday qualifier tournament, and that continues again for the May outing. It's still yet unknown who will be invited to compete for qualification, but with so much turbulence in the scene we may even be treated to some as yet unseen rosters.

A seeded double elimination bracket will produce two teams to join the main event. Upper bracket matches will be played as best-of-threes, whilst down in the lower bracket things get a little bit crazy with best-of-one fixtures until the best-of-three lower final.

Main event

As is tradition, Saturday's group stage will seed the double elimination playoffs bracket for Sunday, with the bottom four teams being seeding directly in the lower bracket.

All matches are best-of-three from the groups right until the upper, lower and grand finals which will be played as best-of-five.

Drafting

If you've ever wondered how exactly the teams have been determining the maps since they stopped using OWDraft some months ago, here's an excerpt straight from the tournament rules:

Drafting of maps will use Blizzard’s List Style draft system. At the beginning of the series teams will flip a coin. The winner of the coin toss picks the first map from the below list of maps, the loser picks their preferred starting side. The loser of the first map chooses the second map, the winner picks their preferred side, and so on and so forth. Maps are not allowed to be selected more than once per series. For Lower Bracket best of 1 series’ the map is randomized from the list below.

List 1: King's Row, Numbani or Hollywood

List 2: Nepal, Lijiang Tower or Oasis

List 3: Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Dorado or Eichenwalde

List 4: Temple of Anubis or Volskaya Industries

Be sure to watch it live on twitch.tv/curse and as always we'll bring you all results right here as they happen on our match ticker and event page.