The real winner of the first Winter Circuit tournament was Horizon
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter for the competitive Apex community
The first tournament of the Winter Circuit ended up being a very gassy weekend, crowning Caustic king of the meta. He has become a crucial part of rosters in both EU and NA, used to control area, provide smoke screens to collect loot or safely rotate, stall and punish pushes, or prevent third parties—and that’s just his tactical. His ult provides enormous offensive and defensive utility as well.
But Caustic’s strenghs have been discussed at length. The real story of this weekend, I think, was Horizon. The teams that used her made innovative and highly effective plays from height, particularly going into final circles, where Horizon teams can reach safe ground or just hover, raining down grenades and weapons fire on any teams unlucky enough to have their Gibby bubble unavailable.
Team Liquid, for example, relied on the combination of Wraith and Horizon for fast, effective rotations into highly advantageous spots. But they also were able to use Horizon as a strong defensive character, saving their game even when Albralelie’s Wraith portal was unsafe.
In this clip, at 2:25:45, it’s a bad portal, and both Albralelie and Flanker go down. But Horizon’s tactical allows them to get a double rez off safely out of harm’s way. Since Pathfinder is hardly ever used in this meta, Horizon teams are generally undisputed on height, nice and safe in places other teams can only reach with well-placed grenades. Team Liquid finished in 7th place, a decent result.
But with a second place finish in NA this weekend, Ranked is Harder, the team formerly known as RP>ALGS, showed that Horizon might be best used far more aggressively. They skipped Wraith entirely and used a Caustic-Gibby-Horizon comp, a beefy team able to absorb damage that would drop other compositions. In a way, this comp’s emphasis on survivability and resilience reminded me of the tank meta in Overwatch, a much-maligned development that relied on the simple, brutally effective strategy of always having more HP than the enemy team.
NRG’s Rogue, Dropped, and Zeroplus were a brand-new roster without any scrim experience together. Despite that lack of competitive credentials, they stomped through the Winter Circuit weekend, winning five out of ten qualifying lobbies while racking up kills. They used Horizon’s tactical mainly to get new angles for shots, typically on an already-weakened team. They also used the tactical in tandem with her ultimate, wiping squads who assumed they could safely stay behind cover and heal up, only to be peppered by weapons fire and grenades from height, or pulled from cover entirely by Horizon’s gravity bomb.
As you can see in the this visualization from Singh Labs below, only these two teams in NA picked Horizon. There was no Horizon use in EU, but she enjoyed a 32% pick rate in APAC North, a region known for its aggressive play. Each region has developed its unique meta by now, but given last weekend’s results, I expect she’ll be much more prevalent going forward.
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What to watch:
Thursday, February 4th, at 1 PM PST and Friday, February 5th
If you’re still craving competitive Apex after last weekend, NRG’s Lulu has announced a $100,000 prize pool tournament called Lulu’s Throwdown. It starts tomorrow, , and there’s a second day of play on Friday, February 5th. It looks like it was invite-only, unlike the open format of the ALGS, and the rules call for team captains to fill out their squads with players who haven’t made it into the finals of an ALGS. An incomplete list of team captains is here. It will be casted by Falloutt and Team Liquid’s coach Hodsic.