eRa win Nerd Street’s Apex Legends Summer Championship

August 10, 2021

by Mitch Reames

Nerd Street’s second Summer Championship tournament took place this past weekend. After Rocket League, Apex Legends was the second Summer Champs tournament. There are still three more tournaments to come throughout August starting with Rainbow Six this weekend, followed by VALORANT and League of Legends the following weekend.

For all Summer Champs tournaments, teams have been working to qualify since March. There are three ways to qualify for one of these tournaments. Teams can win a monthly, rack up points with high placements in weekly/monthly tournaments or qualify through the last chance qualifier.

In Apex Legends, four well-known teams qualified through a monthly tournament. Another five made it in through the Last Chance Qualifier. The final 10 earned the most points over the last season of Nerd Street’s Apex Legends tournaments to get in that way.

With the Apex Legends Global Series not returning until September, this tournament was one of the best collections of top talent in Apex Legends this summer. Although not every top-tier team competed at this event, it did see Cloud9 (second at the ALGS NA Championship), Renegades (fourth) and SpaceStation Gaming (fifth).

Other notable teams from recognizable orgs included Pittsburgh Knights, Ghost, XSET and Noble. Before we get into how this tournament played out, we need to talk about scoring.

Battle royale scoring is the most complicated of any esport because of the nature of the genre. With that being said, a combination of points from kills and points from placement has become the go-to scoring system. At the ALGS Championship, another wrinkle was added called “match point.” This basically meant that whenever a team passed a certain threshold, the next time they won a match the entire tournament would be over. If a team that wasn’t match point eligible won, every team would drop in again.

Summer Championships didn’t have that addition although the result would have been the same if they did. For Summer Champs, the leaders after 12 games took first place and the majority of the $10,000 prize pool. All 20 teams drop in the same map 12 times. For clarity, I’m going to separate the tournament into four stages -- each comprised of three-round stretches -- almost like quarters in a traditional sports event. Here’s how it played out:

Quarter 1: The first three rounds kick it off

Ghost Gaming took an early lead by winning the first round, finishing second in the second round and racking up 12 kills in the third round. Other notable performers over the first half of the first day included Premiere who finished in third, first and third over the first three rounds, and Cheez-It who brought in both a first- and second-place finish in the first three.

Going into the tournament, C9 was the favorite overall. They were second in the NA ALGS Championship and were playing with Mac “Albralelie” Kenzie Beckwith from TSM as a stand-in. Albralelie is one of the most decorated Apex Legends pros ever as part of TSM’s dominant dynasty in the game’s first year as an esport. For this tournament though, their performance started poorly. C9 finished all three of the first rounds in 15th place. They got exactly one kill.

Other early fan favorites like SSG and Renegades also started slowly. SSG popped off in the second round with a 10-kill, fourth-place finish but struggled the other two. Renegades never broke through the double-digit placements and only had six kills through three rounds. For some of these teams, the pattern would stick, but for others, change was coming quickly.

Quarter 2: The back half of Day 1

Summer Champs was split over two days and the back half of Day 1 really leveled the playing field. Up until this point, Premiere, Ghost and Cheez-It had taken a pretty solid early lead thanks to multiple top-three finishes from each team. The highest any of them would finish in the next three rounds was sixth place. Premiere didn’t even get a single kill over these three rounds.

That opened the door for other teams to begin climbing out of early holes. One team who jumped at the opportunity was eRa. A couple solid fragging rounds early had kept them above average, and a win in the fourth round put them within striking distance of the lead. A third-place finish in the last round of the day put them among the leaders going into Day 2.

C9, still buried on the leaderboard, did find one second place and a nine-kill round, but it wasn’t enough to supplant the early leaders. SUP, the top unsigned team on the day, put together one of the best rounds with a 14-kill, second-place finish in Round 4.

The story of these games were the eventual leaders all finding a win. It was eRa in Round 4, then Pittsburgh Knights in Round 5 and, finally, SSG in Round 6. For all three teams, this is where their ascent began.

At the end of Day 1, the top three were Ghost, Cheez-It and SSG. Even though Ghost and Cheez-It weren’t able to place highly, both teams picked up some kills, keeping them on top of the surging competition. Premiere felt the weight of the lack of kills dropping them much further from an impressive start. Ghost’s strategy -- fitting for the org -- was staying in the shadows to opposing teams. It helped take them to the top spot after Day 1, but a host of imitators would follow on Day 2.

Also, for anyone wondering about the name Cheez-It, it’s a sponsored team that competes in Esports Arena Series E against teams like Pop-Tart, Rockstar and Pringles. Nestle, another team from that same series, is also in this tournament. Entering Day 2, it was anyone’s game:

Quarter 3: The first half of the final day heats up

To start it off, the Pittsburgh Knights continued the surge from the day before with one of the best individual rounds of the entire tournament. A 14-kill, first-place finish in the first round of Day 2 shot PK up to the top of the leaderboards as SSG, Cheez-It and Ghost all struggled. For the Knights, the team won two out of three games and were the only team to have multiple first-place finishes up to this point.

That same round, eRa got another third-place finish. That gave eRa four podium finishes in seven rounds with three third-places and one first. Through that point, that made them the only team with four top finishes so far.

In Round 8, C9 would put together the team’s best round. With nine kills and C9’s first, first-place finish, they jumped back up with another four rounds still to play. Unfortunately, that would be the closest they came to getting back into real contention. Poor finishes to round out the day would eventually see C9 finish in 13th place. Only unsigned teams and that Nestle roster I mentioned earlier would finish below them.

Ghost, the leaders going into the day, would fail to make any moves once again. They finished 14th, 10th and 19th in these three rounds. During Round 9, the team was hunted down by XSET. Playing arguably the most aggressive game of anyone in the tournament, XSET were chasing engagements all over the map. On the back of high-kill games in Rounds 8 and 9, they climbed all the way up to fifth place.

Despite XSET’s aggressive play, it was SSG and Cheez-It who finished in first and second place, respectively, with each team putting up an impressive 11 kills. As leaders heading into the day, that was enough to keep them right near the top of the leaderboard.

At this point, the teams could be grouped into different categories:

The Leaders: SSG, Pittsburgh Knights and Cheez-It
The Threats: eRa, SUP and XSET
The Fallers: Ghost, Premiere and PSS
The Decidedly Average: Noble and 2B1C
The Longshots: Renegades and C9
The Effectively Eliminated: Legacy MX, Neanderthals, Nestle, 6xZs, Pickles, Sniper Meta and Dark Matter

Of those groups, only the top three groups really had a chance heading into the final three rounds. The Fallers needed to turn it around quickly but hadn’t had much positive momentum since that first half of Day 1. Still, if they did, they could certainly climb back to the top. The Longshots needed a miracle but had the talent to potentially pull something crazy off with the right breaks. In reality, it was a six-team race which played out over the final quarter consisting of The Leaders and The Threats.

Quarter 4: The home stretch

SUP had shown potential for some insane pop-offs in this tournament already. Then they did it again in Round 9. A nine-kill, first-place finish solidified the team as a real threat to the top group. Especially with Cheez-It and Pittsburgh Knights both leaving early, SUP delivered a great game when it mattered.

At the same time, Premiere, struggling after a hot start, found success again. A fourth-place, 10-kill performance in Round 9 gave the team a real chance to rebound at the end of the event. Noble also got a third-place finish. In all, Noble would finish in the top four five different times. That was tied for the most of any team. The problem was, they were all third- and fourth-place finishes with relatively few kills, which landed them in the Decidedly Average tier.

XSET’s aggressive strategy caught up with them quickly. Round 10 saw them eliminated early without a kill, and Round 11 was a true disaster as an early push made them the first team eliminated.

At the top of Round 11, the Pittsburgh Knights bounced back. The team needed a good performance and delivered second place. SSG took fourth and those two teams would be the leaders heading into the final round. ERa hadn’t found the podium for a little while but was consistent with placements to keep them solidly in The Threat category. In Round 11, they got a seven-kill, fifth-place finish. Cheez-It also grabbed sixth this round, meaning all the contenders played pretty well except XSET. Premiere also lost any momentum they had with a poor performance which all but ended their tournament as well.

C9’s tournament effectively ended with an 18th-place finish in Round 11. Renegades had a 20th-place exit in Round 10. They bounced back with a win in Round 11, but it was too little too late. With Renegades’ win irrelevant to the standings, an engagement between Knights and eRa for the top five looked to be a fulcrum for the final round.

Entering the final round, it was SSG’s and Pittsburgh Knights’ game to lose. If they faltered, eRa and Cheez-It were still within striking distance.

Then, catastrophe struck. The Pittsburgh Knights got two kills but were eliminated in 19th place by eRa, who were absolutely gunning for the leaders.

Suddenly, all SSG really had to do was coast to a high placement and they would lock it in. But the other teams knew it. SSG were targeted and taken out in 13th place. What looked like a two-team race became wide open. Cheez-It were the main competitor, but they were also knocked out in 15th place.

It seemed like the final might take a fair bit of math to work out with the leaders eliminated and a bunch of lower-ranked teams still in. But the only real threat left took care of business. ERa dominated. They got 10 kills, eliminated the Pittsburgh Knights, picked up a Round 12 first-place finish and were crowned Summer Champs.

Fittingly, because eRa won the final map, they also would have won had Summer Champs used the Match Point system used by the ALGS. It was a climactic end to a great tournament. Here are the final results with point totals: