Faze Clan finished first place in Twickenham Stadium this weekend to be named the first Halo London Major winners.
They took the $100,000 and 100,000 Points top prize after beating Optic Gaming 4-2 in the final this evening, with Optic leaving with $60,000 and 60,000 Points.
Faze had an almost flawless tournament, finishing top of Pool C 3-0, before dominating the upper bracket with 3-1 against Native Gaming, 3-0 against Optic and 3-0 against Shopify Rebellion, before facing Optic again in the grand final.
Faze’s North American side of Renegade (NA), Frosty (NA), Royal2 (Canada) and SnakeBite (NA) and coach Royal1 (Canada), were also in the same pool as Complexity, who were disqualified from the Halo London Major as one of their players was caught tampering with hardware.
Faze have become the latest North American side to win on UK soil recently, following Beastcoast winning the Rainbow Six Siege Manchester Major last weekend.
UK side Into the Breach finished bottom of Pool D, though it was close, as second third and fourth place all finished 1-2, meaning ITB were knocked out on round difference.
Fellow UK esports organisation Quadrant, who also helped organise the event, went on a bit of a lower bracket run, beating Native Gaming 3-0 and Proton Gaming 3-1, before being defeated by Spacestation Gaming 3-2.
Coach Royal1 said: “I’m really proud of our resilience. Everyone discounted us, they didn’t treat us like world champions and we just had to remind everyone.”
Renegade added: “I think no one thought we were going to win this event. Obviously we won Worlds but I like that no one thought we’d win. We proved everyone wrong, had really good practice and I’m glad we won.”
Frosty said: “All the work we put in from last event to now, we were hungry for this and got the W.”
SnakeBite said: “It feels great, going to Arlington we felt confident but came out flat. We bunkered down, went over to small fundamentals, and it felt great to play the way we know we can.”
Royal2 said after the win: “Honestly it feels great, we put in a lot of work and, going to the first event, we were looking not too sharp and I don’t think we had the right mindset and gameplan.
“But we worked super hard in the lead up to London and it showed.”
The HCS London Major was the second event of the 2024 Halo Esports season, and the first ever Halo Major in London.
It had a $250,000 prize pool overall, with tickets sold out and live Halo Infinite action from Twickenham Stadium.
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Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
