Darkwings clutches the Red Bull SoloQ North America finals

LoL Esports
November 16, 2020
Mel Hawthorne

The Red Bull SoloQ League of Legends tournament takes a unique approach to the game with nerve wrecking one on one matches. The additional challenges set it apart from regular gameplay, and allows for some friendly competition without the team mechanics.

Last night, Isaac “DarkWings” Chou became the North American SoloQ champion after an exhausting 7 game series. In a 7 hour long stream, we witnessed the best SoloQ players North America has to offer duke it out in several nail biting series.

Red Bull SoloQ Playoffs and how we got here

For those living under a rock, the RedBull SoloQ series pits individuals in one-on-one matchups on Summoners Rift to decide the best SoloQ player on the planet. The whole event has been going on since mid-April, with several qualifiers and series taking place over the past six months.

Rather than it being all about winning the match the usual way, players race to get either first blood, to destroy an opponent’s tower or to reach a 100-minion score first. Whoever manages to meet one of the three win conditions wins the in-game duel. The mode is similar to what we see in the ARAM 1on1 event during All-Stars, but played on Summoner’s Rift instead.

The competition was open to anyone and anywhere, and more than 25.000 players joining for the initial qualifiers. That number has reduced significantly now – players went through their local and regional qualifiers in order to advance to the later stages of the tournament, and finally the Playoffs.

SoloQ North America Playoffs

The four qualifier series in NA, played out as follows: DarkWings won the first event, Twillie the second, CP Freeze the third, and finally Marksboy in the last of the qualifiers. These four players secured their spots for the US finals the hard way. The other four players were selected from the very top of the NA Soloqueue ladder. They were: Warmachine Hyper, Zachariaz, Xvaxious and El Oso.

In the end, the players that did not qualify for the event ended up losing all match-ups against the qualifier winners. DarkWings and CP Freeze were head and shoulders above the rest of the competition and faced off eachother twice

Meanwhile, Canada had its own version of the event with Dao Djin beating Pozay 4-0 in the finals. In fact, the Canadian champion won the entire event without dropping a single match in his entire run. You can watch his magnificent plays and the re-cap broadcast here.

That’s not the end yet though – after the North American finals, things continue at the same fast pace across all other regions!

The overall Grand Final of the Red Bull SoloQ tournament series will be here in three weeks. On the 6th of December, the winners of the different regions and ladders meet (virtually) for one final 1v1 bash. The rules will be the same as in the qualifiers – 1v1 setups where players have to meet the kill threshold, destroy a tower, or make it to 100 CP.

Read next: Vote for your 2020 League of Legends All-Stars today