The following information was provided by Sebastian Adico and edited for brevity
The Rising Empires League is a 2v2 tournament with a major focus on team cohesion and lasting support. Tthe prize pool for these events is crowdfunded via Matcherino, with all the money raised going to the players.
Envisioned as a way for players of all skill levels to compete in team games with their friends in an organized manner across two-month-long seasons, the league is divided into three divisions.
Division 1 is the premier level of the competition. For season one it features 15 teams with some of the most recognizable names in the competitive community.
From the seemingly unbeatable brother pairing of LucifroN and Vortix in ‘Kosas Que Pasan’ to the ever-entertaining old married couple vibe of MarineLorD and Beasty in ‘THE CHIMPS’, or the fully stacked roster of top performers in 3D!Clan, with Bee and Anotand participating in the majority of their matches.
That said, there are a number of teams that have managed to forge something of a name in REL’s first division. Such as the Belenuex/Asian mix of The Rice-Ing Germans who are playing true .500 baseball in AoE and seem well poised to retain their place as a mid-table team for season 2. Or what about Imba?! A team made up of Forgotten Empires and World’s Edge adjacent developers from the balance team who, given REL is not a Microsoft-sponsored event, are able to flex their muscles a little bit on players.
Lower down, in the relegation zone, Teams such as Genesis Gaming and Project Conquerors are fighting tooth and nail against Too Good With Wolllo, a LaSh Crackedy, and Wolllolo pairing to try to avoid the Promotion Play-ins slots, at the risk of going down to Division 2.
We’ve already seen plenty of great series between all teams, such as 3D! versus CHIMPS, in which the clan was able to clutch a 2-1 victory. Or Imba’s wonderful track record of only losing to teams in the top 5 of the competition. But the season is long, and no king rules forever; who will be the first to take a map off KQP?
Then onto Division 2, which is made up of 16 teams in two groups of eight teams. Each group will produce a champion who is automatically elevated to Division 1, while the runner ups will have a chance to battle it out with D1 teams coming down to see if they are worthy of a promotion in the promotion play-ins.
Although the division does not have big household names, their teams have all the elements to produce one. Clan Debils feature in multiple teams, either as its own fully formed one, or as part of other rosters. Project Conquerors also have a team in the form of an academy entry. And the Spanish community of Real Team features their leading team in Division 2.
Division 3
The final level of the competition is Division 3, where any team that wants to try to advance deeper into the league will start for Season 2. Currently, 25 teams take part in the weekly Play all 3 matches, with the top 5 participating in a tournament play-in at the end of the season to see if they have what it takes to move up to Division 2.
Watch The Action
The Rising Empires team is covering some of the matches in the league each Sunday at 15 GMT on their Twitch channel, but the league is open broadcast, so reach out to them in Discord if you want to cast a handful of matches yourself and look out of streamers taking part of the league!
You can find the action here: https://www.twitch.tv/risingempires
