6 INVITED TEAMS TO THE FFIC 2022 SPRING LEAGUE STAGE

The Free Fire India Championship 2022 Spring will start in about a week. We’ll be streaming the Closed Qualifiers, where 48 teams will be competing for a slot in the League Stage of the tournament. From those 48 teams, only 12 teams will make it through. They will be joining six teams that have been invited based on their performance in the Free Fire Pro League 2021 Winter. Naturally, the six invited teams will be the best ones in India. Let’s see who they are.

1. Chemin Esports

Chemin Esports have proven that they are the embodiment of peak performance. Their rotations, firepower, utility and time management, everything is on point! One can seldom spot errors in their playstyle. What’s even better is that they force out errors from their opponents! A team of such caliber is worthy enough of competing internationally. Naturally they will be the team to beat in FFIC Spring 2022. After top placements across all tournaments across 2021, they finally won the FFPL and established their supremacy. Chemin Esports excels in more than just tactics. Three out of the five best players of FFPL 2021 Winter League Stage wore the Chemin Esports colours. Radhetkr has been the MVP for two tournaments straight! Wizardo has matured as a rusher and Anand is shaping up to be the sharpest sniper in the country. A fine blend of brain and brawn makes them the best team.

2. Total Gaming Esports

Total Gaming Esports finished second in the FFPL 2021 Winter. This silver did not come easily to them. They had to work for it. Following a rocky start in the League Stage, Total Gaming Esports scraped together barely enough points in the penultimate day to break into the top 10. On the last day of the League Stage, they solidified their stance on the scoreboard by getting into the top 5. They completely redeemed themselves by the end of the tournament, but the initial lack of momentum probably kept them from reaching the summit first. That being said, Total Gaming Esports has upgraded their arsenal. Mafia has developed into the contender of the title of the best sniper in the country, and is going toe-to-toe against CE - Anand. There was an era where OG - Pahadi was considered the elite marksman of the country (pun intended). That era is long gone, and Mafia is here to rule. Delete has been appearing on the kill leaderboards more frequently. Even their latest recruit TG - Dragogrg plays exceptionally well for his age. 

3. GodLike Esports

This team has changed a lot of names this year. The Captains, Blind Esports, and now GodLike Esports, one thing that hasn’t changed throughout the year is their performance. That’s not necessarily a good thing. This team has never gone through a slump, and always performs well. Nivesh became a household name at the start of 2021. Every other person was either admiring his shotgun accuracy or nading skills. He’s still the man who revolutionised the nading meta in India, but that’s it? His teammates aren’t contributing as much as he is. Ginotra had several highlight-worthy clutches last year. However, in the age where teams like Chemin Esports and Total Gaming Esports field three-to-four players that are frequently featured on the kill leaderboard, GodLike has only two, While this narrative may appear to be harsh or critical of GodLike Esports, keep in mind that this is due to the high standards that GodLike Esports has set for itself. We're so used to watching them pull off incredible moves that their usual moves appear insignificant in contrast, and we believe the players would prefer that we hold them to that standard.

4. Nigma Galaxy

Nigma Galaxy entering India caused waves. When an international organisation picked up Vasiyo, the most experienced and valuable player at that time, people had high expectations. While their fans were taken for a ride when the team announced the rest of the roster, people questioned whether underdog players like them would be able to accomplish much. Nigma Galaxy didn’t have to keep them waiting for longer, as they won the FFIC 2021 Spring. That makes them the defending champions of the 2022 Spring season. Some experts say that NGX was in their honeymoon phase at that time, and hasn't been able to replicate similar success again. Their performance at the FFPL speaks otherwise. NGX - xDivine and NGX - Tahir have evolved into lethal fraggers. They blew past the skill ceiling and kept on climbing higher and higher, into the dizzying heights of stardom. We hope to see more from Nigma Galaxy this season. 

5. TSM 

TSM took a great lead in the first half of the FFPL League Stage. However, they were unable to maintain that lead as several contenders like Nigma Galaxy, Chemin Esports, Revenant Esports and KM Brotherhood zoomed past them towards the tail end of the league. Their issues stem from their early game fights. TSM is a well known and experienced team, however that experience has let them to be overconfident. Most teams start paying a lot of attention towards enemy movements towards the middle-section of the game. That’s when the ‘tracking’ begins. However, before this mid-game phase, TSM appears to be very confident that nobody will clash with them or contest their territory. This causes them to spread out. Often in Bermuda, we’ll see their players spreading out across Mars Electric, Factory and Pochinok simultaneously. The same pattern follows for Kalahari as well. While they drop in a cluster on Purgatory, their rotations are often quite spread out. While the spread out formation does allow them to do their mid-game tracking better, if they aren’t careful, they can get picked off. This problem became even more evident in the FFPL 2021 Winter. We often saw TSM losing a member pretty early in the game, which cost them dearly. Sometimes they’d get wiped out outside of the top 10 in a game. It was these issues that derailed their seemingly stable strategy. On occasions when TSM does manage to keep all their players alive, they do very well and score more than 10 points in a game consistently.  Can they recover from these errors in the FFIC 2022 Spring?

6. Team Insane Esports

Insane Esports consists of some pretty decorated players, however this is their first time playing along with each other. This is a team that worked its way through the open qualifier in the FFPL 2021 Winter, and has now carved out an invite spot for themselves in FFIC 2022 Spring. The progress that they have made in their short stay in the upper echelons of Indian Free Fire is impressive and sustainable. We hope to see this team flourish more, as they are indeed promising. Finishing sixth in the Grand Finals of a premier tournament is no small feat. The amount of pressure that teams face in their first finals is often enough to crush the mightiest of hearts, turning them into timid shadows of themselves. But Team Insane Esports stood tall and basked in the spotlight. While they don’t boast a lot of firepower, their smart decisions and safe rotations might keep them here for a long time. 

These were the top six teams from FFPL 2021 Winter that have been invited directly to the FFIC 2022 Spring League Stage. Soon, we will be starting with the closed qualifiers to find out which 12 teams will be joining them. Stay tuned for more updates!