EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rk3a31J.png)
Quick Facts | Overview | Format and Schedule | Storylines | Interview with Coach Philip | Closing Remarks | Sources
Quick Facts
When: July 19th to 21st
Where: Sao Paulo World Trade Center, Golden Hall
Format: Group Stage into Single Elimination Brackets
Stakes: $60,000 USD Prize Pool, Brazilian National Champion, Entry to International Wildcard Tournament at Gamescom (August 21st to 25th)
Teams: Keyd Team, CNB e-Sports Club, paiN Gaming, RMA, PeesPlay, playArt, Action, Nex Impetus
Website: http://www.cblol.com.br
Patch: 3.8
Overview
If you’re a Twitch.tv addict like I am, you probably noticed, several times in the past months, random Brazilian streams show up on the front page with tens of thousand of viewers, reaching as high as 60k. If you were ever curious about what they were, you don’t need to search any further; I’ll tell you. The broadcasts with the skinny nerd and the smiley chubby guy shoutcasting in fast Portugese were qualifiers leading up to the big event this weekend: Campeonato Brasileiro (aka Brazilian Championship, CBR, and Brazilian Regionals).
This is the zenith of the season for the Brazilian League of Legends community. The winner of this tournament will be named National Champion and get to move on to Gamescom for a chance to qualify for Season 3 World Championship. Eight teams will fight it out through the group stage and brackets over 3 grueling days. Did I mention the prize pool is $60,000 USD?
Oh there’s also the venue: Sao Paulo World Trade Center, Golden Hall. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1S5lJiQ.jpg)
What's that shiny gold dome?
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R0itx95.jpg)
Here's where the action takes place.
CBR is going to be an amazing tournament. Every team has trained extremely hard for this, and this is their chance to claim the #1 spot in Brazil. The competition is fierce, and Brazilian crowds never disappoint. The Storylines section and Interview with Coach Philip will go into more details about the competitors.
Seriously, you do not want to miss this.
Format and Schedule
Group Stage consists of round robin Bo1 play split into 2 groups of 4. Bracket stage is single elimination. Semifinals are Bo3; finals are Bo5.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Uzu2nba.png)
Friday 7/19 (Times in GMT -3)
10:30 – Keyd BenQ vs RMA Ozone
12:00 – CNB HyperX vs PaiN Gaming
13:30 – PeesPlay EVGA vs Nex Impetus
15:00 – Playart vs ActioN BlooDy
16:30 – RMA Ozone vs PeesPlay EVGA
18:00 – PaiN Gaming vs Playart
19:30 – Keyd BenQ vs Nex Impetus
Saturday 7/20
10:30 – CNB HyperX vs ActioN BlooDy
12:00 – Keyd BenQ vs PeesPlay EVGA / RMA Ozone vs Nex Impetus
13:30 – PaiN Gaming vs Action / CNB HyperX vs Playart
14:30 – Cosplay
16:30 – Semifinal 1: Group A #1 vs Group B #2
Sunday 7/21
10:30 – Semifinal 2: Group B #1 vs Group A #2
15:00 – Grand Finals
Storylines
Keyd: On the hot streak
Keyd has had the best results in recent history, winning 2 of the 4 CBR qualifers. They also recently acquired a new ADC, Haelz. He’s hyped up to be the aggressive new talent, fresh from the top of solo queue. Will Haelz be the WildTurtle of Keyd?
paiN: The people’s team
Continuing with NA analogies, paiN is like the TSM of Brazil. They are the first to establish a permanent gaming house in Brazil, and Kami and brTT are like the Dyrus and TheOddOne for Brazilian streams. Will the fan favorites succeed?
CNB: Looking for redemption
Although they are the second seed coming into CBR, their play has been very lackluster lately. Many won’t hesitate to put them behind paiN and Keyd in the Brazilian top 3. Consequently, CNB has been bootcamping hardcore 12 hours a day for the past 2 weeks. Will they make a resurgence when it matters the most?
PeesPlay and RMA: Tired of being 4th
The Brazilian League of Legends scene is more or less separated into The Top 3 and The Rest. PeesPlay (formerly AceZone) and RMA have always been at the top of The Rest, but never consistently good enough to break into The Top 3. Is this their time to shine?
The Wild Cards
Nex Impetus had 9 roster changes in 2 months and has only recently solidified their lineup for CBR. Action used to be a DotA team and is confident that their DotA experience is an advantage. playArt has the backing of an established e-sports organization and a captain with a lot of competitive experience. Will one of these three teams surprise us all?
Interview with Coach Philip
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WPgEcBi.jpg)
Awww what a cute team. Philip is in the center.
I had the absolute pleasure of talking to my good friend Philip about his role of head coach of CNB e-Sports Club, the preparation for Campeonato Brasileiro, and all things e-sports. He gives a lot of insight into the growing Brazilian scene. I thought his responses were so good that I had a hard time deciding if I should have made a separate thread. If there's anything you read on this page, read this interview.
Feng "caelym" Wu: Hi Philip. Firstly, I want to thank you for taking your time to do this interview. I know you're really busy with training right now. Can you start off by introducing yourself? What's your full name? What is your life like outside of e-sports? And how did you get introduced to the competitive scene?
Renan Philip: Oh it’s not a problem at all. Thank you for the opportunity my friend! Well, my name is Renan Philip, and I'm a law student at FAE Centro Universitário in Curitiba/PR - Brazil. I've started with e-sports by managing a team of some friends of mine (vTi Nox, who placed 2nd place at the Season 2 Brazilian Championship) when they needed a new manager and called me. I was already an e-sports passionate, but from that moment on, I just knew that this was going to be part of my life until it was over.
Feng "caelym" Wu: From humble beginnings, you are now the head coach of the top Brazilian team CNB e-Sports Club. For those of us who are unfamiliar with what a coach does, you can give a brief explanation of what you do? Is it a stressful job being part of a top organization and team?
Renan Philip: The role of a coach is being more and more recognized as well as valued in our western world, but briefly I do almost the same as other sports coaches do: organizing team practices and managing the relationship between the 5 players. I myself also perform the analyst role: taking notes of everything we play, how we do it, and what we did wrong, as well as watching tournaments from all over the world such as OGN, LPL and the LCS and trying to adapt or learn things from them.
It is a lot of stress, but the feeling that you get by being in such team is surely bigger than the stress. There's no emotion better than watching a crowd shout out your team’s name, or even better watch the crowd shout out your country's name because of something your team did (at IEM São Paulo when I was still Keyd's coach).
Feng "caelym" Wu: Now let's talk about Campeonato Brasileiro (also referred to as CBR and Brazilian Championship) that is happening this weekend. The venue is spectacular, the prize pool is large, and probably most importantly, the winner gets to go to Gamescom to compete for a spot at Season 3 World Championship. Would you agree with me that this is the biggest Brazilian League of Legends event to date? What are your feelings and goals going into this event?
Renan Philip: I completely agree. This is the biggest Brazilian e-sports tournament up to date. Even in the glorious Counter Strike times there was never such a big Brazilian-only tournament (just to note: CPL 2005 distributed $70k in prize pool, but it was an international event). And obviously this is the biggest LoL event as well.
Being completely honest, I'm fully confident in my team and our whole preparation going towards this tournament. We've practiced a lot, we've worked a lot, we've studied a lot, we lived and breathed this game. We really want to be the #1 team in Brazil.
Feng "caelym" Wu: You talked about how much CNB spent preparing and training for this event. I know your team did a bootcamp for 2 weeks. Can you go over how you trained at bootcamp? Did you do anything different from your normal practice? And how much better do you think CNB is after bootcamp?
Renan Philip: We've had a daily schedule that basically consisted of only going to the gym in the morning, then having lunch together, then going to the bootcamp (which our organization called War Room) and practicing and watching our own replays and watching other tournaments and theorycrafting for about 12 hours with some pauses to eat in between the activities.
We've practiced a lot more in every single aspect, from amount to quality, and the fact that we were living together and focusing on nothing but the game also helps a real lot. We're definitely a lot stronger right now after the bootcamp. A lot of silly mistakes that we couldn't see before were corrected, and we've also implemented a lot of new strategies based on some great teams from other regions.
Feng "caelym" Wu: Let's talk about the competitors in more detail. Group A has Keyd, RMA, PeesPlay, Nex Impetus. Group B has paiN, CNB, PlayArt, Action. I think the general community consensus is that CNB, Keyd, and paiN are the top 3 BR teams. How good are the less popular teams? Who are you most looking forward to facing in group stage and then the bracket stage?
Renan Philip: The other less popular teams are certainly good, but not quite in the same level as the top 3 I'd say. I'm looking forward to our first game that will be against paiN, as well as any one of the playoffs games, but the bo5 finals will certainly be special.
Obviously we're not taking the other games as guaranteed wins. We've studied every single team that will be going to the tournament and will be prepared for them as well.
Feng "caelym" Wu: Who do you think you will face in the finals?
Renan Philip: I’m not sure. Either Keyd or paiN since this will be the other semi-final.
Feng “caelym” Wu: Would you rather face Keyd or paiN?
Renan Philip: You're killing me Feng!! haha. I really wouldn't like to choose an opponent. I'd say whoever is the best in their semi-final, but if I had to pick one it is Keyd.
Feng "caelym" Wu: Arguably, the most important prize of the tournament is a chance to qualify for Worlds at the International Wildcard Qualifier at Gamescom. Earlier you said that you looked at other regions for strategies. necrosed, coach of paiN, in the past posted on Teamliquid that he thinks paiN can place top 3 in NA LCS. How do you think Brazil compares to the established regions (NA, EU, KR, CN, SEA)? How do you think Brazil will fare against other new regions (Latin Am, Russian, Turkey, Oceania) at Gamescom?
Renan Philip: I think the Brazilian top 3 are at least capable of getting into the LCS and playing well there. I can't say that for sure because the last time a Brazilian team went to an international event was IEM Hanover where paiN got only one win over Millennium, but they got some pretty good games against Gambit and Fnatic. It was some time ago and before all the additional experience from competing in the LCS for the teams.
Against the other new regions I think we will fare pretty well, as they don't have as much experience as we do as well as structure (7 out of 8 BR teams got a bootcamp/gaming house for the S3 Brazilian championship; some of them will just stay on the gaming house even after the tournament).
Feng "caelym" Wu: A lot of western viewers are not familiar with the Brazilian scene. Can you tell us what the superstar players to watch are? What unique Brazilian champions, tactics, and strategies should we keep an eye out for?
Renan Philip: Every one of the 15 players from the top 3 teams are considered above the line here, even the newcomers such as paiN's Venon and Keyd's Haelz are getting their recognition. But to name each team’s best players, I'd say CNB's takeshi, paiN's Kami, and Keyd's Snowlz are quite well above the line and probably can be on par with every single western midlaners if not with some other asian ones.
We are really adaptive, and every team have dedicated coaches such as me, so expect some pretty good adaptations and changes in between games on the bo3s and bo5. Also, right now the Brazilian scene is really based a lot on the OGN, at least when it comes to which champion is prioritized, so expect our picks and bans ratios to be quite like OGN's.
One champion that Brazilian teams play on a regular basis and that most teams don’t (I can't remember any other than FXO and one single Korean team) play is Rengar. At least in the last LAN tournament (BGL Arena), Rengar had a pretty high pick ratio. But I can't go further than that, because if I do I could be just giving out my team’s information or even some analysis that I've done which other teams haven't.
Feng "caelym" Wu: I want to wind down this interview with some talk about the growth of League of Legends in Brazil. Last year, CBR’s total prize pool (including qualifiers) was $80k, and the event was inside another (BGS, Brazil Game Show). This year the total prize pool is $100k, and the venue is dedicated to CBR. What happened in Brazil e-sports in the past year? You mentioned earlier that this year's CBR is equal to CPL of the glorious Counter Strike days. What do you hope to see in the future? Brazilian LCS maybe?
Renan Philip: League of Legends itself, as well as a lot of the other competitive games have grown tremendously here and that makes e-sports as a whole grow a lot bigger. Other FPS games are having Brazilian championships, and the Brazil Gaming League and its structure have also helped out a lot. IEM São Paulo happened with great success. We've came from a 15k viewer S2 Brazilian Championship to gradually going up higher and higher until BGL Arena had 60k viewers, among other things.
By the way things are going, with teams getting bootcamps and gaming houses, more stable rosters and dedicated players, and the viewership going up higher and only second to the actual LCS, as well as already getting more attention than other global e-sports, I can only look forward to a Brazilian LCS in 2014.
One of the things that our community manager Bruno Vasone said earlier this year when questioned about a Brazilian LCS was that teams weren't sufficiently stable or even dedicated. I could agree with him then, but right now we've proved it wrong so...
And talking on the glory days, most people don't know that Brazil have a pretty big background in e-sports from Counter Strike, where we used to be at the real top tier scene. In Korea, League of Legends is getting recognized as the new Broodwar; in Brazil, it is getting recognized as the new Counter Strike.
Feng "caelym" Wu: Damn, that was beautiful. Muito obrigado, Philip! Thank you so much for taking time from your busy schedule to talk to me about the exciting and fast growing Brazilian League of Legends scene. I hope your insightful answers will attract english-speaking fans to follow the BR scene and tune in to Campeonato Brasileiro this weekend. Do you have any final words for your soon-to-be fans and the western community?
Renan Philip: Thank you as well Feng for the great opportunity of talking to such an important community that Teamliquid is. I hope what I said helps the Brazilian scene get some more recognition or even get the chance to be watched by some of you League of Legends passionates.
I'd also like to thank everyone that has read through this whole interview. Even though the questions Feng made were awesome, my boringness may have been tough to beat. Thank everyone who will be watching the Brazilian Championship this weekend, I hope you guys like the games and get to know our scene better!
Lastly I'd like to send huge thanks to CNB’s sponsors: Kingston HyperX, X5 Computadores, Massa Leve and mouses.com.br.
You can follow Philip at http://www.facebook.com/philipcoach and CNB e-Sports Club at http://www.facebook.com/CNB.eSc
Closing Remarks
Mark my words: Brazil is the next big League of Legends region. The scene is growing fast, and they are hungry for more. It often goes unnoticed because the scene is somewhat insular due to the language barrier, but the viewership numbers reveal the real truth.
The infrastructure in Brazilian League of Legends is also surprisingly well developed for a new region. Seven of the eight teams competing in CBR were in bootcamps or gaming houses. Most of the teams have a dedicated coaching staff. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Brazilian teams prepared harder for this tournament than North American teams did for Season 2 Regionals.
Campeonato Brasileiro provides Brazil an opportunity to be scrutinized once again by the international audience, and it’s their time to show how far they came. Some coaches already feel that the level of play is up to par with LCS; now they have to make us believe.
I have to end with this obligatory and timeless video from IEM Sao Paulo. Hue.
Sources
+ Show Spoiler +
Renan Philip
https://www.facebook.com/CNB.eSc
http://www.cblol.com.br/about/
http://www.cblol.com.br/matches/
http://br.leagueoflegends.com/pt-br/news/está-no-ar-o-site-do-campeonato-brasileiro
http://br.leagueoflegends.com/pt-br/news/campeonato-brasileiro-muito-além-da-competição
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5054/5400404037_d00b5c28c3_z.jpg
http://cdn.precioyviajes.com/00/13/88/00138840_gp.jpg
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-revela-data-do-campeonato-brasileiro-de-league-of-legends/
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-define-narradores-do-cbr-de-league-of-legends/
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-divulga-programacao-do-cbr/
http://mycnb.com.br/ingressos-para-o-cbr-custarao-r-2000/
http://mycnb.com.br/diretores-da-riot-elogiam-equipes-brasileiras/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-digolera-do-nex-impetus/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-z1riguidun-do-action/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-playart-jow/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-micao-do-peesplay/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-korvac-do-rma/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-loop-do-keyd-team/
https://www.facebook.com/CNB.eSc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_A0pSG2V-c
http://www.cblol.com.br/about/
http://www.cblol.com.br/matches/
http://br.leagueoflegends.com/pt-br/news/está-no-ar-o-site-do-campeonato-brasileiro
http://br.leagueoflegends.com/pt-br/news/campeonato-brasileiro-muito-além-da-competição
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5054/5400404037_d00b5c28c3_z.jpg
http://cdn.precioyviajes.com/00/13/88/00138840_gp.jpg
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-revela-data-do-campeonato-brasileiro-de-league-of-legends/
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-define-narradores-do-cbr-de-league-of-legends/
http://mycnb.com.br/riot-divulga-programacao-do-cbr/
http://mycnb.com.br/ingressos-para-o-cbr-custarao-r-2000/
http://mycnb.com.br/diretores-da-riot-elogiam-equipes-brasileiras/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-digolera-do-nex-impetus/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-z1riguidun-do-action/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-playart-jow/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-micao-do-peesplay/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-korvac-do-rma/
http://mycnb.com.br/pre-cbr-entrevista-com-loop-do-keyd-team/
Quick Facts | Overview | Format and Schedule | Storylines | Interview with Coach Philip | Closing Remarks | Sources
((( I thought we were friends, why do you intyerview my ARCHNEMESIS?
