Gear up, Spartans! In partnership with Nissan and the Halo Championship Series (HCS), FaZe Clan took up their mantle as a partnered team and hosted a highly-praised Halo Infinite Invitational Tournament this past weekend. The event saw 128 teams enter the open qualifier round with a total of eight teams making the main event to battle it out over the lion’s share of a $75,000 prize pool.
Main Event: When it comes to Halo esports, bracket play is the place to be and this event proved no different. The opening rounds of the double elimination bracket saw the 8 qualifying teams (Cloud9, Complexity Gaming, FaZe Clan, Sentinels, OpTic Gaming, XSET, eUnited, and Pioneers) work their way through a gauntlet of high-caliber matches. In the end OpTic’s new-look roster (added former Halo and Call of Duty legend FormaL in place of Pistola) punched their ticket with a win in the Upper Bracket Finals, while tournament favorites Cloud9 clawed their way to the Grand Finals with a 3-2 lower bracket victory over Sentinels.
…And The Winner Was?: Cloud9 came in as the victor of the past three major tournaments, but OpTic Gaming had different plans for them this time around. In the end, OpTic closed out the Grand Finals with a clean 4-1 victory over the previous tournament champs. With their win, OpTic took home $40,000; Cloud9. Sentinels, & FaZe took home $20,000, $10,000, and $2,500, respectively.
This Is It, Chief!: If smaller esports ecosystems, like Halo Infinite’s HCS, hope to thrive – we should expect to see more of these partner-ran events in the future.
Image taken from: fazeclan.com
