Winter Circuit #2 is on for this weekend despite Texas weather disaster
This is The Final Circle, a newsletter about Apex Legends
A winter storm thrashed the state of Texas this week, killing 34 as of yesterday and leaving millions without power. As of today, many homes there are still experiencing rolling blackouts, leaving them intermittently without heat, hot water, and yes, internet connections.
Call of Duty league has postponed this weekend’s matches affected by the weather.
Valorant’s Champions Tour has also been delayed:
Closer to home, the $10,000 Wraith-Wattson-Path showdown community tournament, organized by the pro player TeQ, was also delayed a week:
Despite these widespread and prudent delays, EA/Respawn has made no move (yet) to postpone the second tournament of the Winter Circuit, nor has there been any communication, as far as I know, about the ongoing situation. I’ll put any developments in the comments if I hear anything.
This is a familiar story by now, and it’s entirely possible that the tournament will be delayed later today, and possibly after a round of qualifiers are completed. If not, here are the latest starting times each day directly from the ALGS discord. (Note that only one round will be played today, a change from a few days ago that may or may not be a concession to ongoing concerns about the weather.)
This weekend’s tournament should be a big debut for Horizon, given the meta shift since her limited use in the first Winter Circuit outing. I’d wager we’ll see a ton more Horizon in NA and EU, and a similar amount in APAC North, given that region had already caught on to her strengths.
We’ll also see if rosters trying out Wraithless compositions is just a fad, or whether the dictatorship of everyone’s favorite interdimensional skirmisher is indeed, at its end. I personally think her use will continue to drop, but we won’t know for sure until we get Singh Labs on the case.
Given their dramatic entrance into the top tiers of the ALGS and last week’s shit-stirring involving Ranked is Harder and TSM, I’d say that’s the performance to watch this weekend, if you’re going to just follow one team: NRG’s Rogue, iZeroPlus, and Dropped. There’s a lot of questions that can be answered by their results in this second Winter Circuit tourney: Is ranked really harder, rewarding grinders with the skills to dominate in the ALGS? Can they repeat their success with the unorthodox composition TSM’s Hal said was “trolling” and “a waste of their time”—how strong is Horizon right now, and can a Wraithless composition thrive in this meta?
Livetweeting Winter Circuit #1 was fun and I’ll be doing that again @UR_Scrubb on Twitter, mostly for the qualifying rounds.
Next week, I’ll debrief on the tourney results and release a bigger post on the role of coaches in pro Apex.
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