RR15 and the Summer of Upsets
Recap of the most exciting RR of the year
Roulette Rivals is the biggest 1v1 competition series of the Hitman Community. Join Frote7’s Speedrun Community to find out more, or learn about Roulette by clicking here.
Summer is heating up, the World Championship is closing in, veterans aim to return and rookies hope to make their mark. Roulette Rivals 15 returned with the usual August excitement, though with only three rule changes being mentioned in the changelog:
All types of boosting were disallowed including cover aims, particle boosts, and others,
Falling Object for Claus and Nolan were banned,
the Molotov Cocktail was allowed to be used for Impact Explosive kills.
The summer edition continued to be the least popular of the three regular RRs, but still, 47 players signed up, beating last year’s third regular RR by seventeen entrants.
RR’s biggest absentee remained defending world champion TheTimeCube, with real life getting in the way once again; his return will have to wait until RRWC 2024. RR13 champion In4Fun and three-time champ Yannini skipped the tournament due to a holiday, while the rest of the notable misses included lukedotpng, k-kaneta, Lord Munk, and Nezuko Chan.
The Ultimate Prize
Roulette Rivals 15 began with Gorg beating BluntsNBeatz 6-0, and with both players choosing Marrakesh. The picks were not unsurprising, given the community mood at the beginning of the tournament. On the day signups began, this Substack revealed that ChrisX3’s Marrakesh was the longest-standing map record and would be 999 days old on the opening day.
Chris' record survived the opener, and ChannelJoined’s 7-1 win over Crazy4Daisy, which also featured two Marrakesh picks. The record eventually fell on Day 3 of the tournament, to none other than Scruffy, ending the reign of the Marrakesh 4:38 at 1001 days.
That Scruffy vs Gorg match was entertaining for other reasons too. After the defending champion won Marrakesh and almost took the Hokkaido record, a tricky Mendoza was up next. Due to a late restart and continuous tech issues, the lead was slipping away from him, while Gorg kept strong on his wild first-try run, not giving up even when Tamara found bodies in the toilet. After tracking down every last rat poison on the map, Gorg made Tamara sick again, then drowned her for an in-game time of 22:01. Though Scruffy won the match 6-2, Mendoza remains one of the most memorable maps from the tournament.
The Class of RR15
RR15 will be remembered for the rookies’ performance as well. Though only three signed up for this edition, they all managed to win at least one match, a first in Roulette Rivals history.
With three wins, including upsets against HOUSEN and IlikeHitman, graory ended up best of the three rookies, finishing ninth overall. Alph kicked things off with a surprising sweep against ThatObserver and became the first since DaniButa who set a new map record as a rookie, winning Berlin in 5:16 against SovietDubov.
Though Dynaso lost to Pigiero and Rocky, he didn’t remain winless, eliminating veteran T_Nort23 in LB Round 1. Speaking of Rocky, RR15 was his best tournament to date, with three wins and climbing to LB Round 4, eventually losing to Moo but not without taking a map of his own.
A Spectacular Half
In Roulette Rivals, there are no seeds or similar privileges, anyone can meet anyone as early as Round 1. Sometimes this produces deadly or uneven brackets and RR15 was no exception. Two of the direct tournament favorites, Scruffy and Phanium were in the same half, along with RR14 runner-up The Rieper 47, Roulette Divisions champion1 Moo, always impressive Jokerj, and dark horse Music Inc, already predicted to go far in only his second tournament.
The first encounter among these six was the Round 2 match of Phanium and Moo. After a map record tie2, Moo took a 5-1 lead, looking invincible on admittedly three easy spins, before a mighty Phanium comeback began. He overcame a small photo-finish deficit to win Miami, stayed clean in New York when Moo couldn’t and managed Bangkok slightly quicker than his opponent to win the match 7-5.
Phanium’s “reward” for winning was a match against Music Inc, who defeated Alph in the previous round. The four-time champ began this match with a 0-4 score as well, and even though he won Colorado, Music took the game away to send Phanium down to LB. Music then defeated The Rieper 47 with similar confidence, with zero restarts and zero maps lost.
But the other Round 4 match was somehow even more spectacular than all of the previous ones combined. You can read more about the unforgettable game of Scruffy vs Jokerj here, but in short, Joker pulled off an amazing underdog win in five maps, before it turned out that one of the photo finishes had been miscounted. The two players returned for a final map the following day, where they tied again before Joker barely eked out another win, this time for real.
Watch: the two-day game of Scruffy and Jokerj, the greatest match of 2024 so far.
Renaissance
The bottom half of the Winners’ Bracket was far from “free” or empty, but the four projected quarter-finalists (quatilyti, Dein Nomos, Frote7, IlikeHitman) only had two fifth-place finishes to their name from the last three tournaments.
Most favorites got off to their expected start, except graory upsetting IlikeHitman in Round 3 and perhaps Ducker sweeping Pigiero in Round 2. Dein Nomos and Frote7 were the two players to eventually make it to Round 5, with Frote7 narrowly completing a reverse sweep against graory, and Dein Nomos cruising through three opponents without losing a map.
Ducker lost to quatilyti (who lost to Dein next), but his journey was far from over. The six-time champion recently switched from console to PC and his newfound confidence showed: after only scoring one win in his last two events combined, he swept HOUSEN and Kingcamel before a razor-thin back-and-forth 7-5 upset against The Rieper 47.
The six-time champ was back in the Top 12 after RR12 and had nothing to lose, contributing to the other major upset of the tournament. Scruffy was ready as ever to mount his first major Losers’ Bracket run since RR10, but after eliminating Moo he faced an inspired Ducker. Colorado featured a difficult Sean kill which Ducker barely got and Scruffy barely failed, while the other two maps simply went to Ducker by a narrow margin. Scruffy’s first-ever 0-6 loss and seventh-place exit blew the rest of the tournament wide open, guaranteeing a fourth different winner in four events.
Chasing Five
Music Inc’s 6-4 win against Jokerj and Frote7's 7-3 victory over Dein Nomos resulted in an unusual WB Final: the first without Scruffy or Phanium since RRWC 2022. Although the first map went to the four-time champ, this was certainly Music’s day, scoring four quick map wins, including a record-equaling 2:39 Hokkaido.
We haven’t looked at the upper half of the Losers’ Bracket yet, where at the top, Phanium kept racking up wins, including a reverse sweep against Parapluie. He would face ThatObserver in LB Round 6, who went under the radar to win five matches after losing to Alph early on. A tough game for both stood at 3-3 after 55 minutes, but eventually, Phanium found another gear to eliminate Obs in seventh place.
Phanium and Jokerj’s fifth head-to-head match ended with the fourth Phanium win, while Dein Nomos ended Ducker’s outstanding run in LB Round 7. The LB Semi-Final looked to be Phanium’s at first, but Dein crawled back to 4-4 on Santa Fortuna and Berlin. Unluckily for the consistency king, the Dartmoor decider was a Phanium masterclass, but it was regardless an impressive fourth place for Dein Nomos.
Of the four meetings between Frote7 and Phanium, three took place between RR12 and RR14, with the most famous one being Frote7’s one victory which eliminated the then-defending champion from RR12. Both chasing their fifth title, this was likely their most consequential matchup, but unfortunately not the closest: apart from a sub-9-minute Santa Fortuna, Phanium won all maps, though two of them in a narrow photo finish.
Watch: MusicInc becomes the second new finalist in two tournaments following his WB Final win over Frote7.
Ten out of Ten
Frote7’s third-place finish is his best since RR8 more than two years ago, a sixth medal to his already imposing tally. Winning the Losers’ Bracket, Phanium earned the right to challenge for his fifth title, while Music Inc aimed to become the first new champion since RRWC 2023.
As is expected from a rematch, the map picks and bans were defined by their past. New York and Chongqing were both maps that Music Inc won against Phanium, he even snuck in a Colorado ban as well. Phanium’s best chances were to rely on maps he had the most experience on, combined with maps where Music hadn’t played before, like Haven Island and Sapienza respectively.
The match began in New York where Music was slightly ahead but was spotted trespassing, while Phanium carried his first try to a comfortable win. A difficult but straightforward Sapienza was played down to perfection by both players, Phanium finished first by 0.51 seconds, and his two loads were 9 seconds longer, for a score of 4-0.
Phanium’s decision-making prevailed in a surprisingly open Dubai spin as well, winning the map by 10.5 seconds, no photo finish count was needed this time. Miami presented a rare challenge in target manipulation as players needed to end the race, catch Moses Lee, and electrocute Sierra Knox in quick succession. As Phanium tried and failed, Music found himself in a similar pickle, eventually having to give up his 3.5-minute lead, which there was no recovery from.
Map #5 was already a match point for Phanium, on a difficult Chongqing spin with two loud firearms and two facility disguises. While spectators expected the new “two drone” strategy, both players opted for the old reliable approach instead, so there was little deviation between the finalists. Music Inc was quick when he needed to, but came always just short: Phanium’s experience took him to win the fifth map as well, ending the final in a historic 10-0 sweep.
Watch: The RR15 Grand Final between Music Inc and Phanium.
Like his last RR final more than a year ago, Phanium won the match without losing a map, scoring his fifth title and becoming only the second person (after Ducker) to win a Roulette Rivals championship in three different years. His previous victim, TheTimeCube, went on to win the World Championship later in 2023, so it’s only a good sign for Music Inc, quickly becoming a fan favorite after two stunning tournaments.
All eyes are now on the World Championship, starting on October 18th and crowning a champion on December 8th. With three different winners this year, the world champ not competing since last year, and a whole new format being debated, expect this RRWC to be the most exciting yet!
Roulette Rivals is the biggest 1v1 competition series of the Hitman community. Join Frote7’s Speedrun Community to find out more, or learn about Roulette by clicking here.
Roulette Divisions is RR’s off-season counterpart, the primary practice event for RR.
Moo was the first to finish and became the new record holder with 2:59 RTA.