Fortnite: Ninja Battles $80,000 Tournament Week 1 Recap and Results
| Tags: Fortnite
| Author Matt Pryor
The Season X Champions come out on top in week one of Ninja Battles.
Week one of the Ninja Battles $80K USD weekly tournament series is in the books. The tournament’s first week featured a trios format including multiple professional Fortnite players and personalities across the community. Some of the participants include World Champion Bugha, FaZe Funk, Nate Hill, Zayt, Saf and many others. Ninja teamed up with professional players Liquid Vivid and Co1azo for the event.
The first week saw players compete in five matches without competitive rules in place. It featured helicopters, a max of 3,000 materials per player and no moving zones. The scoring system awarded two placement points for an 11th-12th place finish, five points for a 6th-10th place finish, seven points for a 2nd-5th place finish and ten points for the Victory Royale. Trios could also earn one point for each elimination accumulated. It was a real throwback to the old days of competitive Fortnite.
Season X Champions Reign Supreme
The final results came down to a 59-point tie-breaker between the Season X Champs TSM Zexrow, TSM MackWood and Yung Calculator and the NA West trio of Liquid Riversan, NRG Edgey and Liquid Cented. Week one’s tie-breaker leaned in favor of the Season X Champs, who collectively walked away with the $25K USD grand prize. Their path to victory required a lot of Floppers, Slurpfish and Bandage Bazookas. The former FNCS Champions continued their dominance from two seasons ago.
Riversan, Edgey and Cented took second place and $15K USD. TSM Emad, FaZe Bizzle and FaZe Megga pocketed $10K USD for their third-place finish. Rounding out the top five were the trios of FaZe Funk, Nate Hill and Bully in fourth place and Chap, Scoped and Av in fifth place.
Other notable trios inside the top ten include another NA West trio featuring 100T Arkhram, NRG EpikWhale and 100T rehx. Fortnite World Cup Champion Bugha teamed up with Liquid STRETCH and TSM Commandment to take tenth place.
Heal Offs and Controversial Player Decisions
Congrats to @TSM_ZexRow @MackWood1x and @yungcalc On taking the first ever #NinjaBattles Thank you to everyone who participated! See you next week ^_^ pic.twitter.com/eQNJGoXZjf
— Ninja (@Ninja) May 28, 2020
Throwing it back to the old times of competitive Fortnite was interesting. However, we soon realized why moving zones exist and how rough healing battles were to watch back in the early days. Now that the Trios Arena playlist is live in Fortnite, we can expect custom lobbies with competitive rules from here on out. Ninja said as much in a Tweet reflecting on the tournament and congratulating the winners.
Casters Ballatw and MonsterDFace interviewed one of the three players from the winning trio after the event. Team SoloMid’s Zexrow voiced an expletive-ridden speech where he scathed players who talked negatively about his FNCS Invitational performance. It was an unfortunate way to end the broadcast, but it comes with the general maturity level in competitive Fortnite. Professional player Clix also withdrew from Ninja Battles in the middle of the tournament in favor of the Fortnite Duos Cash Cup. Later in the night, Zexrow did apologize for his actions on Twitter but still left a bad impression regardless.
Congrats on your first and last Ninja battles placement!
— Ninja (@Ninja) May 28, 2020
Ninja hinted that Zexrow would no longer be welcome in the Ninja Battles weekly tournaments. However, he has not explicitly spoken about the Clix situation.
Despite the shaky format and questionable player decisions, there is a promising future for Ninja’s weekly tournament. The weeks ahead will likely feature much more competitive lobbies and possibly even a variety of scoring systems. We have no insight as to if teams will change from week to week. We can expect some trios to fluctuate with each passing week as players look to earn more of the $80K USD on the line each week.
Stay tuned to ESTNN for more Ninja Battles news and Fortnite updates!
Featured Image: Ninja
Matt is a graduate of Southern New Hampshire University. He appreciates all esports titles but primarily focuses on Fortnite and Call of Duty. Matt continuously analyzes gameplay and plays the games himself to better understand in-game decisions by the best players in the world.