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Music
Yeah
Nothing's near this game.
Every loss makes something more.
Look at this!
There's thunderous crowd!
It reminded us that victory is never granted.
The world tested us.
Now they know who we are.
Tribblings are made in North America.
What are you guys doing just basking it asking what and a glory dog
You need glory? You guys haven't won in a sign six years.
You literally never won EWC. You won one major and you act like this.
Speak French?
Ah, maybe.
Classic N8 bullshit. Can't even speak more than one language.
Welcome to stage one of the North American League.
So glad to have you with us in our newly renovated Copenhagen studio as we dive into the competition
of what is now the best region in the world, at least right now, and we get to save that.
I'm Jonas Rillinger alongside Laxing and Alfama who'll be stepping in for Foxe who will not
be joining us this stage, but we'll see some more special guests later on this week and
next week.
But what is it like being in enemy territory, Leo?
I mean, you guys talk so much shit about us.
I mean, what is this?
It's totally fair, because you do the same thing, but I'll say this, I used to live here
six years ago.
I was part of an AL.
I don't want to go dive too much into what happened when I was staying in NA, but I was there.
I was part of an AL.
It's fun to be here.
It's fun to not be behind the keyboard anymore, because now I can threshold people and stuff.
Being the one that's threshold.
Well, I'm actually happy to have you here, because I think we can have a really good
back and forth when you hear me just glazing all of NA, and then you can try to put something
in there, and I'll just immediately shut it down, just with what happened at SLC.
Well, SLC was a dream come true for us NA fans.
It was on home soil.
A lot of copium.
from the EML side, and we saw an all NA Grand Final.
I mean, Lax, it was the perfect situation
to be there for all of the NA fans in person
for the teams who were thriving as well.
I mean, I'm glad you talked about the fans
because I've never seen an EU event
where we've seen an entire stage being full.
But again, I mean, Art Zero once again, being able...
I mean, hey, listen.
That is just a strange lie.
Didn't you get the best shot up?
But on a Friday, I'm a major...
Yeah, on a Munich major.
Major Friday was never full.
Saturday was never full.
It was only Sunday, and they showed up through and through
Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Facts of the matters, dark zero, the winners.
I mean, again, this team really, really has done wonders.
I think that roster change, clearly with Kino and NJR
coming on, really has paid dividends for this team.
Because when you look at that old SSG core,
they didn't have that flexibility.
They didn't have that versatility that they do have now.
And especially that structure, like I said,
from NJR and Kino, it really is the big reason
as to why they found as much success on top of winning SLC.
And EML did not find as much success, Leo.
Listen, we can't be the best all the time.
No, I'm not going to.
I'm not going to.
Really?
All right.
I'm not going to.
Listen, you're.
OK, so everyone is against me, right?
So I've got my host that's against me.
The other analyst is against me.
The production team is against me.
But no, but I will actually agree with this.
I think we were disappointing.
I thought SEL was also disappointing, by the way.
So, I think it's two dragons that are looking weird
and an ale in the middle doing well.
But I do think that we were not looking the best.
I'm actually glad for NA and, in general, the crowd.
They come here on home soil,
they get a full NA Grand Final.
It's not the same energy as SI in Sao Paulo
and Brazil with two President Simzinez in the Grand Final.
But the storylines are there.
The storylines are there.
And I think it's also such a great reward
for people that have been working for a long time
for this new era, Skolau, G9O.
It's great to see them finally rewarded for all of the work they've put in.
Well, we also saw at SLC the debut of Operation System Override,
the action with which started this week in EML,
the dokeby rework has come and exploded on the scene lacks.
I mean, Leo, actually, I guess you hit the saw at first hand throughout EML,
just the impact that she can make now.
Yeah, we anticipated it, like when we saw the bus that she was going to get,
And honestly, looking at the ML, I was not surprised to see her being abused.
To roam the Reverters, you see the Denari here that chooses not to answer the phone,
and he will blow up with his phone, actually.
And you can see here, he has to fall back to site, and that's what's making it very special.
It also has this huge sound cue, so when a really good player uses that sound cue, boom,
he knows someone is there once that, that's the beauty of a great entry.
And if you can see, you know, throughout the tournament, throughout the ML,
We saw it being abused early in the round, later in the round in a clutch situation to make sure they would get that skill.
It's just, it's so strong at any point in the round and currently being abused.
Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing for me. It's strong at any single point where all DL could be.
It was really used more so in the early round, getting that control really eliminated the fact that you haven't drone certain pieces up.
And even in this clip right here, I mean, DL can literally do it all.
That's the EMP.
have the phone call ringing the explode the phone's going to explode able to get
the kill I mean there's no other operator that would be able to do this
scenario the exact same that don't be 10 and it really is thankful to the buck
that she does have but it isn't a very very strong spot right now and it's
clear that the devs have been watching and have taken community feedback that
she is maybe in too strong of a position right now we've got some changes
coming for the mid-season path and I think that's so important to acknowledge
just for the simple fact when we jumped into CX when we had that showcasing we
We saw the devs talk about we want to be more in touch with the community.
We want to be able to fix and adjust accordingly with time given that they're going to be more
responsive and this is an exact showing of that, that their dedication of listening to
the community, watching the pro scene, seeing how these operators are being used and then
quickly identifying where they can make their adjustments.
I think that is an important thing to note here that things are being adjusted in such
short little time.
Well Leo, what this is all about, what stage one is focused on is taking the 10 teams that
we have in the NAL and whittling it down to just four.
EWC in your backyard in Paris is what these teams
are now looking to qualify for.
Yeah, it is very important to know that as well.
And maybe even slightly more important than majors,
not saying this to rage bait you guys.
In the sense that,
It might work.
Listen, EML runs EWC, to be fair.
It has many reasons for this.
The reality is it's a $2 million cash prize.
And right now the winner of EWC will be the first team
to qualify to Sixth International 2027.
So it has a lot of impact.
And honestly, after SI, I think it is one of the most,
if not the most important turn of the player can attend
with the prestige.
And yeah, it's in my backyard.
It's in Paris.
I'm more excited.
You're going to walk up and show up there.
I mean, I'm curious for you.
I just kind of want to pick your brain here.
I mean, how do you think secret's going to do
so that they get the auto invite?
Honestly, right now it's not looking too good.
No, it is literally.
I like it too great.
And it has stolen and pooched there.
At least some of the players, they're guaranteed a spot there.
So I mean, that's got to feel good.
They don't got to sweat bullets.
So you so to say you see secret winning EWC and you take Adrienne from us and then you take Savage from us
No, that's just not I think they wanted to leave. I think they just saw the checks
Maybe we're hitting a little different over here in NA. That's why you're here the check
Different so you know it all it all goes full circle
Well already teasing some of the roster changes that that we will highlight later on today
But something we did earlier in kickoff and did not go
Well at all was put together a ranking of the top ten teams in the order that they would be in
And why not do that again here for stage one, Lacks?
And give us your tier list of where our teams fall.
That's a little more pressure on me, because Fox is in here.
So you can't just roast two people.
You've got to roast one.
But I think, respectfully so, you
have to look at dark zero and shopfire
bellen being at the S tier just for the simple fact
that we're 1 and 2 at Salt Lake City.
I think, respectively, that makes perfect sense.
Now, when we jump into that B tier,
I still think this one honestly fits.
It fits the category.
We're looking at five fears.
We're looking at wild card.
Five fears went flawless throughout group stage.
was the first team to make SLC and honestly,
they did a really good job at SLC given the lack of experience.
And then for Wildcard, I think that's just a name
that you have to give the respect
because they have always been the best North American team
at an international level, maybe not regionally,
but internationally for sure.
Yeah, if you base the results of five years,
I agree with you, they deserve this World Cup,
it's the same story.
I'm looking at C, I'm just wondering like,
what are the names there?
Because surely we haven't spoken about 100 teams yet.
We've not spoken about M80 who just got savages in IGL.
Shelly, so you're putting, wait, so you're putting
the current space station roster, four funny sports
on the same level of M80, like the same level.
For those of you at home, one of 30 has now become
four funny sports, so they do have an organization.
But answer this question here, because that is a big one.
Yeah, so I mean, if I want to play hypotheticals,
which that's why I didn't, why it's why I even put
SSG in Five Fears, where they are.
Which is maybe just the goal of doing your cheerleaders,
by the way. Right.
I mean, it's it's my opinion,
of course, but when we look at
M80 and 100 Thieves, I mean,
I'm looking at the current roster
changes and just where they even
place last stage. I think 100 Thieves
they got some very good players that
does respectively. Yeah, as it seems
if we were going off of what they were
last stage, they'd be in detail,
plain and simple for 100 Thieves. Even for
I'm 80. I would almost drop them lower
because they didn't meet expectations,
but with the change with Savage, I will
I'm playing hypotheticals.
I'm playing 2020 hindsight.
They were very close to be able to qualify for SLC.
I believe space station almost knocked out dark zero.
They just needed two rounds to be able to qualify.
And then even for five years, they had Vino.
Unfortunately DC lose internet in their series ended up losing
that entire series where had that not happened,
maybe it's a completely different shape.
So if I'm not going off hypotheticals,
just based off where the result wasn't kickoff,
I think respectfully, they're all in good spots.
They're all in good spots.
Well, I see two teams missing.
Do they fall into C tier?
Absolutely not.
We're going straight to D tier for Cloud9 and Outlast.
And, respectively so, Cloud9 hasn't really
found their stride coming into North America.
And then for Outlast, I'm putting them there just
for the simple fact they couldn't find any success coming
into their first aid.
And it's not to discredit them by any means.
There are all five brand new players into the scene.
It is very tantalizing coming into this for your first time.
We know what it's like coming into it.
It is a lot to take, especially now where C is at.
I mean, this is a very competitive league.
And I would hope that going into my tier list that I'm making now,
this can easily shape out to be something different once we get this stage underway.
Yeah, and for at last, you know, only up from here, you know,
they can win more than three rounds in the game.
Well, you only hope only up from here, right?
Yeah, I think doing better than 7-2 is, you know,
an objective that I think is worthy.
Yes, as they had into this one.
Clearly agree.
Looking at, make it just a minor improvement from kickoff would be good.
But we all have a chance to see all these teams dive into the action
throughout the day today.
this is a best nine day round robin everybody plays everyone and so you will
see all of these teams in quite a best of one gauntlet we see dark zero to start
things off Leo you'll see your boy savage in our second match he sees and 80 and
SSG for the first time what are you looking forward to today I think I'm
AT I'm gonna see you stated right of course obviously I want to see him I
want to see him hi jelly new players I think he you know I've just known savage
to be with Secret for so long, it will feel Leo to for me to see him on a new New Jersey
looking at white card as well. I'm glad I can see baby shot and Adrian play in SR right
following under suit. Yeah. Well, it's what at this point is that you're giving it up
on him. He's just been there for so long. He's thought of the region. All right. All
right. I'll let that go. Can we see that because I want to pick. I mean, what we're
letting it be a Leo show at this point. EML's taken over. Yeah, right. Just to put that
I want to give my opinion on some of these games.
Now I am looking forward to four fun e-sports just for the simple fact, I think some that has to be noted, they have representation.
And that really does a lot for you as a player because you are being represented now.
You have something to actually play for.
You have a jersey.
You have a jersey that obviously helps as well.
And it really makes you feel like the team is actually a team when you guys have those jerseys.
Like you said, you have that support behind you.
You have a salary back behind you.
behind you so I am looking forward to see what they can bring because again they
did show a lot last day throughout all of this honestly I'm really looking
forward to each and every single game I said last stage or during kickoff if
this is by far been the most competitive that we've seen the NAL and I
can't imagine those expectations aren't going to be met here going into this
stage and now with an SLC major title under the region's belt right you
expect that competition just to ramp up and the winners of the Salt Lake City
Major we'll get a chance to see them right now in our very first game dark
0 against four fun eSports, the former one of 30 organization. This should be a fun one to get
things started. Dark 0, they lift the trophy, now they come back on soil lacks and they look to keep
up the momentum. Yeah, absolutely. Again, I mean one big thing for me that I will always hit the
nail on the head is just the simple fact is that roster never had structure. They never had the players
that could play a supportive role and with those additions of Kino and NJR it clearly has paid
Dividends time and time again and even for players like false players for like J9o
They were able to flourish and flex and be far more versatile
And it just really shows when you get those pieces that you didn't have before it can tremendously
Make a difference and it's the big reason again why they were able to lift that trophy at SLC
Yeah, I think I will put an answer that I think they had made you the most structure in the world
Absolutely when it comes to outside of the game, but you're right inside the game. They were lacking that backbone
I think very often I felt like the previous space station roster struggled to adapt in the game to a counter plan
If you look at this you look at absolute dominance one single
Fupa a single be a one that they lost and after this just a straight-on victory upon victory is it's beautiful to see even the
Phase game. I mean, I think that really took everyone by storm and even for myself. I don't know for you, Leo
I've never seen any of the faces of phase look upset. Yeah look confused of what's happening
that was the first time in my career of seeing this that I've seen any face
player flustered and we were seeing it every time we pan to them during that
series. Yeah and I think looking at this roster it was a long-time coming thing. I
think that call off especially has been building a specific system of you know
nutritionist, mental health is important, the fact that you need to wake up at a
certain time, you need to exercise, those are all the kind of stuff that when
you force that upon your players and your players are buying into that, maybe
Maybe it's not gonna work in a short term, but in the long term, he was always gonna
win an event.
And I was just waiting for that moment for Colotte.
What was he doing that when you were a player, when he was a player as well?
Literally six years ago, Colotte had me really egoized the enemy.
He had me start meditating.
He was doing it that early?
Yeah.
He was as a player and he was pushing me to go exercise as well.
Like, Colotte had a very important influence on me despite us playing together only for
a few months.
And I can see what he's doing for his player as a coach now.
And finally, it's paying off.
he gets a major title. And the most important thing with that setup is he's setting up this
system so that they can actually win a long run. It's not only this major, maybe he's
building a way that these guys can win convincingly EWC, the next major SI, because that's a system
that's built for long years.
What's about consistency at this point, right? You come off a major title like this and how
do you stay level headed? And how do you keep that up? Something that, as you said, call
up preaches day in and day out, but their opponents today for fun eSports, the former
one of 30 team who now has organizational representation. They made kickoff through the Challenger
series earlier this year and for the most part lacks, they performed, it seemed like
they exceeded expectations in kickoff and now it's going to be about keeping that up.
Yeah, they absolutely did. I mean, I think again, when we looked at last or kickoff rather,
it was the most amount of rookies that ever came in at any given time. So there really
was a lot of head scratches is where these teams are going to place where we're going
to see them and honestly they delivered now you could contribute some of that obviously
an accelerated lead they didn't have to play all nine all ten teams or nine teams rather
being the tenth team but with each and every single game they did fight tooth and nail
and they did show progress with each and every single game obviously having the support from
Pino and that packer who have do have the experience they are vets in that sense but I think what's
even more important to me is sure they didn't get over the finish line they weren't able
to make a major, but they did stick together.
And especially with what they went through in playoffs,
they really went through trial by fire.
I mean, the siege gods clearly were not in their favor,
making Bino lose his internet, having to go through that.
And it doesn't matter what team you're in.
Mentally, that really is taxing.
When you have the game in front of you, you should be winning it.
And then all that happens, all that then continues on.
I mean, it is unfortunate.
And again, with all the off time, especially
for all these new teams, reps are
going to be the most important thing.
And I think just with the off time
And what they were able to do, they're going to bring even more of that ingenuity and just being able to be more vibrant coming into the stage.
I think that's the one good news I would have for this team is that they're in a B1 setup now.
They're in a setup where they don't have to play for groups of three other teams and get eliminated really quickly.
They can test stuff.
The second best thing is, like you said, with a core player that stays the same, you have two months in your season where you can come up with your stuff.
You can create some incredible strategies, some chaotic stuff, some unpredictable stuff.
On the other side, DZ, they had to show everything to IndySoul, like CD-Major.
I'm sure they had to take a break to really breathe a little bit, because this was a huge achievement.
If there's one moment where you can take down such a fabric, it is in a BO1.
It is the moment where you surprise them, all the way at the beginning of the stage, so no one knows what your map pool is.
So I'm expecting surprises to come from 4Fan's spot.
I like that angle here. Much more positive spin on it, because when I look at this on paper, I see Behemoth, DZ.
That's it.
Like Goliath.
Right, exactly. They just showed us an impressive map pool just about everything they could do, taking down the world champs, doing all of that, taking down SR on the main stage.
How do five... five, well said, five fears, this is going to be a problem. How do four fun esports overcome that?
They have fun. That's the biggest thing. You know, we're talking about this, you know, if they lose here, we can easily go back to the organization. They're having fun. It's four fun at the end of the day.
But no to in order to get over it is really just believing in themselves
They've shown time and time again that they compete with some of the best and dark zero
They're gonna come with a target on their back again. Yeah, you know, you just touch on they had to show
Everything of their playbook to win that entire thing
So they really don't have a lot of time and you're not gonna be a team that's gonna be able to switch up everything
You're gonna have to be able to adjust
But that's always where DZ is going to find comfort is they can adapt because that's what's got them over that hurdle
That's what got them win at SLC.
So it's going to be even more important
that we're going to see those changes.
We're going to see the unpredictableness
from the side of fun Esports.
Four fun Esports.
Yeah, it's going to be a tough one for real.
Four fun Esports.
I think there's just going to need to be a lot from them
to really topple this, but it's not
to say that they can't do it, because they absolutely can't.
And we mentioned the danger of the map here.
And we'll get into this, Leo.
Let's take a look at actually where we're going to end up,
because as we said, how do you take down the big dogs
who in a best of five show that they can do just
about anything, do you go to the map that won them the major?
Yeah, you try and take them by surprise.
You aim for a map in their map pool,
and you're like, I don't care if they love that map.
I just want to make sure that if we play these guys,
we're going to land on that map.
And then you know that a week before the match,
and then you spend a full week screening
that double screen blocks per day.
You know these likes, you've used it before.
You create a whole Counter-Strat setup,
and you screen that for the entire week
so you can make sure you take down dark zero.
And the shit part about it is though,
If it doesn't work, you really have to throw out the playbook,
and then you really have to start getting scrappy.
And that's really where it's going to fall on B-Neil,
be able to make situations fall into their favor,
being able to problem solve.
That is by far going to be the biggest hurdle,
if what Leo's talking about, you're
going to be counter-attacking.
If things aren't playing suit, it's
not going to the blueprint that you worked out for,
you have to be able to pivot on a dimes notice.
And I think it's fair to assume that this
was a purpose for Furnistball to learn on that map,
because, you know, you said it, they won't sell Xity on that map.
They are on the four win streak on that map.
They managed to beat Shopify, Rebellion, LOS, other teams in the AMAT, I believe.
For Fanny Sports, they showed it as one of 30 in kickoff,
and they got destroyed by AMAT 7-3 on the map.
And that was the biggest thing, though, is they found success on their defenses.
But again, attacks is where they were being telegraphed.
Attacks is where AMAT and the better teams will always pick you apart,
is because they know how to adapt, they know how to problem solve,
they know how to find a solution for what's in front of them.
So that's where the two months off really comes into play where we can actually see how well that they've developed with the time given to actually be able to diversify their play.
Well, Lex, it's been a minute, but you are an SI champion in the months following right in that cool down afterwards, like, do you change the way like, are you taking some time off to recover?
Are you not as focused in like what I'm trying to get an idea. So how the DZ players have approached prep for stage one
Given that they just came off a major. I mean, this is the tough bit because I think we see this with every single major winner
We see this with every single SI winner. It's the slump. I mean all of your hard work finally pays off
I think most players don't want to admit sure we may slack off a little bit
We aren't taking it maybe as serious not to say that's always the case
but there is something to be said once all of that pressure is off your shoulders you made it work everything connects
That sometimes it does trickle off
So what's gonna be most important is that they're all in the same mindset
They have the same attitude and what better than to have a coach like call out that is going to reinforce
And I would say that's where a lot of teams lack is they don't have that kind of leadership and
Reinforcement that call out really brings to a team as Leo said well, let's talk about that man right there a little bit more
We haven't quite given him his flowers.
He was the number one player at SLC.
NJR, Leo played incredibly well.
He was consistent the entire time.
It wasn't just at the end.
He overtook somebody.
He was the best player at SLC the whole time.
I mean, how did you stop a man like that?
Yeah, I don't know if you remember.
He made his debut in the same year I arrived in NAL.
He surprised everyone.
He was part of the same, you remember this underage roster
with Iconic, NJR, Gen I know, all of the NJR?
That was the first rub.
Yeah, he was the first player of that young team with Iconic and NJ-O to make it.
And NJ-O was instantly super impressive, and I think ever since then, he's grown a lot.
Let's be honest, like many other players, when they're young, they start as the entry,
and then as time goes on, they go all the way...
I mean, you slowly go back for it towards a support role, but NJ-O, he does it all from the backline.
He doesn't care. He's still fragging out.
It's actually super impressive to a player that is both backbone, but also can deliver the frags.
I think what's really helped him in his career not only obviously joining this roster and being part of their system
But obviously like you said starting in the beginning starting as an entry frag or being able to flex around
But then going to that initial dark zeal roster and dark zeal historically was such a pen and paper team that once you broke away from
That like they didn't know what to do
And I think now with the amount of time and the different iterations of these roster that he's been on now
He's able to diversify his own style of play
So it just only trickles down into a natural state of coming into this stage
with this new roster of SSG.
It's really allowed him to
diversify his play because we
called him a mailbox where he
would just hold an angle.
But we're seeing an SLC.
I mean, he was getting scrappy.
He was getting in there, but he
was also still to play those
cutouts.
He was still able to play those
angles.
He was still able to hold
certain rotations down, so he
really is a very flexible player
as much as people have called
him a mailbox and just being
able to lock down angles.
There's no better way to kick
off stage one here of the NAL,
but with our favorite Canadian
duo.
So a welcome in Parker and
and Jesse, as we get things under way here,
you guys had a chance to watch DZ,
cast DZ, take the win in Salt Lake,
and now you get to cast them
as they take on four fun Esports Parker.
How you feeling about getting this one started?
Oh, I feel great.
I honestly really enjoy casting the one of 30 teams.
So now that they're on four fun,
they might be having a bit more fun themselves.
I think there'll be a,
I think there'll be a handful for DZ to start with.
And I mean, hey, every championship winning team
absolutely despises to go up against a team
that is a big question mark.
And Forfun are absolutely a question mark.
Yeah, I think no doubt about that.
I'm just excited to get back into the action.
You know, Salt Lake City was such an amazing event.
It was so fun getting to see the NA teams have
some success internationally.
Now we get to bring it back home,
see all the teams that we know and love.
And even in a match like this one, right?
DZ, 1 of 30, they didn't play each other back during kickoff.
Now under this new banner, Forfun Esports.
It's going to be a new challenge for Dark Zero.
Well, Dark Zero, they lift the hammer,
or not the hammer quite yet.
They lift the trophy in Salt Lake City,
and now they get to start things off here in stage one.
Let's take it away.
Well, thank you very, very much.
Jesse, I'm rocking my Toronto swag today.
We've got a bevy of teams that will have some players playing out of here.
Nobody from DarkZero or this four fun eSports team will be competing.
But I mean, when you look at these squads,
what more is there to say about DarkZero?
They won the Salt Lake City Major.
They looked like an incredibly and almost absurdly dominant team.
You can't say the same thing, though they did come a few rounds away from themselves, qualifying in that match up against five years, they're going to be looking for a little bit of revenge.
Now they've got an organization behind them and they've got a team that has hopefully become a bit more experienced in that offseason.
What do you think the odds are here that they're able to surprise DarkZero?
I mean, community gives them 18%.
I think that feels about right to me, Parker.
There's no doubt DarkZero will be coming in as the favorites.
That'll be true no matter who they play during these first nine games at group stage, but sometimes right after a big tournament
That's when things get crazy
It's still a best-to-one at the end of the day
And I love the way that Leo is able to break down the map veto on the desk
You know, this is a map that dark zero have shown a lot over the last couple of months for fun
We'll be ready for it and they'll be getting their strategy prepared the play against the Z
Big question for me. Do you want to take out the dough could be it has been so powerful in you?
We've seen it dominate across different regions. It's the Monty first for for fun and second of all
It will be the solid snake so don't could be available for the first three rounds
Yeah, I mean we haven't gotten her in action yet for the North America League because well today is day number one
My friends, so we'll see if she is employed the same way. She is in all of these other regions
She is a nuisance operator through and through she was consistently one of the strongest operators
Oh, I mean, honestly, since she's been released, let's be frank, there's never really been
a bad time to bring a doke to me, but these changes to her, as the desk very wisely and
very correctly pointed out earlier, Ubisoft said, doke, he's a bit too strong, we're maybe
going to nerf her a little bit.
And they didn't say like we're going to change her.
They said we're going to nerf her.
So we don't know when those nerfs are going to come in with it.
That means introducing different counters.
It's hard to say.
But I mean, I'm certain that the devs will be able to address it because we don't want
another lion, we don't want another yellow, we didn't want another blackbeard.
Fenrir is on the situation where an operator releases and it's just frankly
really really strong. We'll start on cafe Jesse. It'll be one of the middle
floor bomb sites with defense stretching upwards for four fun as they settle in
the round number one. Yeah not a huge surprise to come up from four fun Parker.
This is the bomb site that they played the most during kickoff as Leo said. They
only played this one time during the first last couple of months and that was
a pretty devastating game versus M80, but their defenses weren't that bad.
They actually won half of their defense rounds, so they did find some success here on this
half.
I think they're going to have to do that again and start 0.
It's so hard to attack into a team like VZ when they've got so much clutch potential
on their backlines.
You have to be able to rack up the scoreboard, I think, a little bit in these first six.
Undeniably, so, the highest rated player on one of 30, a top 10 rated player in the NAO
kickoff.
Not exactly the guy you want to tussle with, but the captain and long standing member of
this Dark Zero Coral that was on Space Station and onwards will get kill number one, a pretty
easy start for Dark Zero.
And I mean, you gotta get some credit to Mike Dubbs there.
Packer also taking quite a bit of damage, not exactly the start you want with the team
on the right side of your screen.
60 seconds deep, NJR, the new Paragon Ace skin in his hands, that is a beauty, I've
picked it up for myself and it's insane to reload animation on it, so grab it now for
a big Ace player.
Already the long range, hard breach, Parker is being a real nuisance for 4FUN Esports,
it makes Volsper's position so difficult to play.
Volsper had some really good moments in kickoff as well, Jesse, where he was able to dominate
against really tough competition, but consistency was his bigger issue.
You would have excellent games that would fall off the wagon and follow up there.
Silo will be on the board first, but beyond that, it's DZ having their way with this defense.
Vultrper still frozen in this position inside a freezer.
It's up to him and Bino.
Most of the focus from Dark Zero very wisely has been clearing that top floor.
And oh boy, have they ever cleared it.
It's all up to Bino now.
Four still remain from Dark Zero.
The only casualty, the only blood that Four Fun's been able to spill so far is J9O on that sledge.
And while usually I'd say hey on this bombsite hard destruction and soft destruction are oh so important
I think DZ is gonna be in a pretty good shape here for the final minute
Then they can hunt down Bino or prolong the inevitable as anybody's guessed Jesse
It looks like they might have their hands full over on reading door
C4 goes out Bino still tucked into his position
Wanted man being hunted down and DZ will feast upon his innards
The very final kill in DZ, the defending major champs start off game one, round one, with a victory.
Don't overcomplicate it. I think that's going to be the motto for Dark Zero in this game. Parker, really clean top floor push, they don't overextend, they don't take many risks, they open the walls with double-ranged hard breach, they clear through, they win their fights, you know, it's not a crazy extension coming out from 1 of 30 on that defense.
Sometimes you'll see teams try to play a bit more aggro inside piano, but since Dark Zero bans the Azami, it can be really tricky to pull that one off.
Kino has some great shots in the midst of this. I like the idea from Mike W here. It's round one, your first round of the stage.
Why not get a little active, but DZ were ready for it.
Forfun Esports, welcome to the scene, welcome to the league.
It's a tough first round opponent, but a nice little first showing there.
or fun not wanting to just sit back and play this normal play this safe or who
would take some risks I mean if you if you settle in against a better caliber
team and let them play their game you're gonna get you know when there's
when there's a pretty big skill disparity I want to say between rosters we
typically will see them kind of if you humor me for a second here Jesse sure
hold their brain out of their skull and do some funny stuff and I mean for fun
as a team that is is fine when they're structured I think it's fair to say
they're definitely not a top four team based on experience and pedigree yet
but there are some really good assets on this roster and some terrific gunners I
reference Mike W I reference Volsper both of them are able to contend with
really tough opposition and Mike W hadn't done such a risky gambit back in
round number one he could have potentially done more damage later into
the round but of course that's just us being a bit hypothetical here we'll see
We have a restrained Mike W hits round number two,
so we're already 30 seconds into action,
and once again, Dark Zero ascending to the top of the cap.
Well, I'll tell you what, Parker.
Dark Zero, they've won multiple majors.
They've had some of the best players in the world
on this team, but they have never in-orged history
won a game against Mike W.
So this is going to be the real test for BZ,
that their fans have been frankly dreading.
Since this organization entered the scene,
this might be their toughest test yet.
and play
We're settling in DJ. I was gonna say DZ is a bit of a slower team. We saw this
Unfold during kickoff. We saw this during the major itself. There goes Kino for some reason
DZ have put two of their players in harm's way with almost no follow-up whatsoever. That's a bit of a tough start to go
They do find Volsper
That's the only pick they've got so DZ will trail they've lost their soft destruction in the sledge
they've lost the Hibana as well. DZ rocking a very similar lineup to what we saw in round number one,
so they like these tools and they like how they will work on whether it's the reading bombsite
or over on the other bombsite across the hallway in my end. Nice little nice throw to be able to
get that man advantage. Now, Owen's you and Jane I know, Wade bossed from round one as well, also
taken out. So with a man advantage for fun, they choose just to draw this back a bit. Both Packer
and Vino, we're going to be playing down towards that first floor. Packer just on the white stairs,
not too far away from the bomb site but Bino with that nitrous cell down below in the pulse
could be very scary if this goes for another late push from DZ.
Mailbox is the word that people used to describe some of these players on DZ,
NJR in particular. You're just going to be sitting and holding a cross preventing one of
these defenders if they want to retake or get active. The problem is is that you can't really
commit a lot to flank watch here when you're limited on time and you're limited on man count.
If DZ had the numbers advantage, yeah, sure that's possible.
NJR will find Mike W, while Beano down below makes some calls to the nitro cell,
lined up in the hands of Silo, who himself is a whisper away from the death.
This is more winnable for DZ than it sure appeared, Jesse.
And with 30 seconds to go, the only thing DZ has to wrestle with is the pace of the round.
Two nitro cells and the pulse down below.
I need to reiterate that carpenter.
No, it's not quite that perfectly safe on this site.
After maybe going for the table, that would be Mod Gas,
is now in JR and Fultz are fishing for something.
Silo still living on borrowed time.
He has not exposed himself.
Down goes Fultz. Silo traded out.
Five seconds to go in the round.
They found Packerbino without any to stop it
with a nitro cell.
Does the diffuse kid get planted?
No, they've surrendered it.
And DZ, a lack of coordination, are not
able to recover in time for fun.
Will win their first round in the North America League.
Huge little play to come through there, Parker.
They get just aggressive enough to down that diffuse
and it's inside of reading.
DZ, they slow a little bit too much in the midst of that parkour.
They pump the brakes because they're trying to find these last couple of players.
I don't think it was a surprise to DarkZero that there was somebody down below,
but they thought if they could just work slowly enough,
they'd get a massive man advantage clearing through that site and be okay.
In the end, I guess that came true.
It was a 2v1 advantage on the site, but without that, the fuse kit,
with that little play happening just in the mid-round,
I think I might have been packered to drop that on the ground with NJR's depth.
Left to watch it back in the replay. They might even just traded it over to fault.
Whatever it was, Packer comes around with the SMG-11. He does get traded, but it doesn't matter at that point.
One-one piece.
Still a scrappy round for Dark Zero, and honestly, if they don't surrender that diffuser away from the bomb site,
there's a very high likelihood that they're able to pull that one off, but again,
that's just us theory-crafting Jesse. There's no guarantee that they would have actually been able to do it.
I said that PZ ran a similar lineup back in round number two.
That was just me being a little funny because they were in the exact same operator line up
Not that I'm not that they're the same bomb site
But I mean if GZ likes the look of their soft destruction their immobilization
Everything that comes with it for a reading execute and then they look at a potential mining execute
Why not bring those same tools?
They've made some minor changes here on the side of dark zero running with the nomad the ram and the sense
sends sends does see quite a large amount of play on this map really strong
operator when it comes to concealing advances for the other attackers that
be a direct bomb site hit for off-site and don't forget that sends can also be
very good for the execute to get no doubt about that sends really common to
see here on the bottom floor of cafe but the bottom floor is not really where
we're gonna start Mike W. has just been mistroned up on the top floor they
didn't spot him they might have caught him earlier in the round but given he's
Just playing bar backstore Parker this might go unnoticed by dark zero which could end up being hugely disappointing
You see J9O looking down the red stairs. They do not seem to be aware at all of this top floor position
So now the onus goes to my W right when do you choose to strike when do you choose your moment?
Do you let them start focusing on your anchors?
Do you try to create a little bit of chaos first or are you just gonna try to go early catch them before they're ready for the push?
It's a great question and one that we will see in the next and answer for in the next
one minute and 40 seconds now.
I think W might catch them by surprise.
If there's nobody I'm dedicated flank watch here, might W be X Factor typically with this
team yet to find a kill through two finished rounds of cafe.
He'll come online at some point.
I'm certain you don't end kickoff as the ninth highest rated player and then drop a goose egg in your orgs.
Org's debut at the top lead, so...
But I mean, Dark Zero really nestled in here.
Do they have anybody watching this spot with Mike W?
He could be a stab in the back and completely derail DZ.
There we go!
There's a bit of an ugly shot, but he manages to take down Foltz,
and it might have thrown some dissension in the ranks of Dark Zero.
Yeah, that's a huge problem for DZ.
Now they know they just lost their sends.
You talked about how good it was for the execute,
and you're absolutely right, but it won't be a factor here.
They're just gonna have to go hit site,
Fight the 4v4 on the main bombsite because they can't worry with the player above.
And down goes Volsper, Mike W finished off, there's DZ coming alive, two very swift kills.
Packer has his hands full as the defuse kit getting planted by Kino.
Not just the objective dog, Kino's got four kills to his name as well, Jesse.
Packer finished off by Neuer's, Neuer's yet to die.
Same with NJR, these immortal players on Dark Zero will need to be handled if
Forfun wants a more competitive match.
Dino and Sylo now frozen outside of his bomb site and Dino knows for good measure he's got to cross three bombs staring in his direction
It'll leave Sylo trying to get to the site
But he's outdone by an air jab and finished up by DZ as they regain the lead to one
It's not easy to trip up dark zero Parker. You have to admit that it's a great flank from like W again
It's not the cleanest shot, but like ultimately it's fine the issuers on DZ they mistrone him
He gets his one at the very least, but it doesn't matter
You know when you lose your sense in theory that makes it really difficult to stop the plant that I'll horizontally if there's somebody deep inside a
Kitchen they can probably get a long angle, but these he didn't allow that to come through anyways
They still had a really good chance of getting that plant down
immediately pivoting to go towards the bomb site
I think was such a good call to come through from DZ and
Again like it starts to provide these problems towards for funny sports where it's like if you're big flank that goes mist runs
Doesn't work out for you. It's still not enough to win the round. What is?
time out called by for fun here is Mike W affectionately a shortened version of
Mike Wazowski is wearing a Monsters University hat really living up to his
point I do greatly appreciate that one I mean ever ever a consistent man I
obviously not an ideal situation to call your time out after that third round
dough could be Jesse has not been a factor whatsoever dark zero likes to
play their way we don't see a ton of variation in the operators they bring
We saw this through Much Assault Lake City.
They are a flexible team, but they have a system.
They play to it if it works.
Don't break it.
It's something that Callout has talked about quite a lot.
They try not to be too reactive a team.
They try to set the tempo and the meta.
No doke, maybe they thought that there would be a band.
Maybe they thought that this four-fund team would ban out
and doke.
Maybe they just said, we don't need you right now.
And hey, I mean, I'll say this.
Well, they're talking to too many of the teams.
When you have a broken operator, you're kind of dumb
not to use it, right?
You've got to take advantage of it.
That's why all these teams that cope about the oh, you know during the lion that they abuse lion
Rather you could abuse lion if you really wanted to you know mills and
Morals and integrity aren't gonna necessarily win you a championship go abuse lion go abuse go could be but
There are other teams that say if we know the nerf is coming
We're not gonna bother investing time and learning an offer here that might only be strong for a matter of month
That could be what easy is doing, but again, I don't want to put words in the mouth
Well, Nura's looks to just up the narrative a bit fine, but you'll find out in this game and he will be sticking the Dokobie for this fourth attack.
It was on the grid and we all know that the first quarter, Parker, and those are two operators that really have to watch the same job.
Both the new Dokobie and the force grid may excel in getting a defender out of a specific hunkered down position.
And again, like Nura's 5-0, DC have a good go-far through this game. They haven't needed the Dokobie, so you let those first three rounds go without showing it.
showing it you hope they don't ban it out and now that for fun have used all
their defense bans they can abuse doka being around four five and six and
god forbid if this game heads over time these people have dope available set as
well so I like not showing it for the first three rounds now that you use it all
they want because I'm a bigger brain that exists inside of my skull it's
entirely possible I mean hey they're major champs not me I'm just the one who
talks about the game that's for certain so now they can't abuse that operator and
I think abuse is honestly the correct word for somebody like doka be same with
one line was quite so strong. Use them. If they're busted, use them again. Yeah, you'll
feel better about yourself by not running a doke of the eye. We want a championship,
we want this operator being busted. That's great, but you know, do what's best for you
and your team. And right now, DZ immediately throws four fun on the ropes, two very fast
kills on the side of Dark Carol Foltz gets traded out. Volsper dies as well, Kino keeping
up his terrific play. Jesse, the support player, who had a good kickoff but wasn't
anywhere near the top of the standings in Salt Lake now finds his sixth
kill and Jarrah will get on the board as well and it's all up to Bino.
You know, 1v4 is a logic bomb gun, you know, you were in so much trouble.
J9O hunts him down before the phone can explode and DZ wins yet another round.
I mean, listen Parker, that top floor defense, it looks so good from 4 Fun Esports.
It's just a shame that the attackers got more value out of it than 4 Fun did.
I mean, DZ, they have Kino kind of coming through the back and the
midst of that he's got that a fuse kit but he ends up I think he just drops the
bar or skylight gets in kind of the middle of that top floor defense finds a
frag early on to silo and then is able to use some of these mirror windows against
the defense this frag here from Tino it's absolutely free up on the
vault for because he's got the defender utility on his side ended up being a nice
little double there from Tino to end out the round Janna I know where the second
is well some high value frags towards the end of that round and DZ now up to
3-1. Yeah, DC's really not breaking any sweats here, Jesse. Like, most of the numbers overwhelmingly
favored dark zero. I will say opening kills so far are two for two, so there is some fight
that we see at a forefront in the early portions of this round, but it collapses shortly after that.
It just seems like once dark zero finds out where forefront is, it's just a matter of time until
they hunt them all down. Yeah, and only one of those two first bloods resulted in a successful,
you know, translation to a round which was back in round number two in Foolsburg.
Got the better hand of Darts Zero, but there was a couple early picks.
So, I mean, Fort Fun are a team where we know that they're all right.
Again, there is a bit of a disparity in skill between these two teams.
You got a major champion, you got a squad that didn't even make the major.
DZ is pretty much doing what we expected of them so far,
but I will give some, you know, commendation to Fort Fun for putting up a fight to this point.
Sure. I mean, I think for DZ, like, this has never been a team where you look at them and you're like,
Oh, they're gonna win every opening duel. They're gonna dominate every round straight from the start.
I think what makes Dark Zero such a dominant team is just that you can literally never count them out of a round,
even if you can get a pick or two picks or three picks against this BZ team, you're never safe in that picture,
especially on the attack. BZ threw a kickoff and SLC 34% linerate with the opening death on the offense,
one of the highest in the league, so you've got to watch out for this Dark Zero squad,
But first steps are still important.
Four fun, hunting for 167s deep onto round five.
The top floor hold still remains intact with Packervolt
for a silo holding things down.
Just patience at this point in time.
If DZ can drone things out and get into the building,
they're in good shape.
J9O, punished by Packer.
He was the player that we were looking at for a moment there
and it's read well.
Nitro cells, kills outside of the building.
I've been in the Forte so far, 4-4 fun.
Mid-round though, that's where things get a little tough.
Nice shot by NJR. Oh my goodness.
You can't do that if you don't have the 8-paragon skin.
That's just what that operator and the skin does.
Nice! Daddy!
It's a beautiful shot both from the skin and the flip.
But I mean, hey, this is still a 4-4 round coming through.
It's actually the exact same Nitro Cell.
Packer killed J9-0 with a Nitro on this bomb site three rounds ago.
So a little bit of repetition from Jack, something he might have to figure out as this match goes deeper.
But DarkZero, I think, still on a confident spot. They've got good time on the clock.
They've got still a decent bit of software for the DMR at least from Kino.
If you're gonna lose anybody, losing the sledge does kinda suck, but they've got other tools,
even if they're not perfect, to try to make some angles, make planes that are trained a little bit more awkward.
How do they collapse onto this? If they get a burp pick, that'll be so big for DB.
and Kino went fishing and he'll land a big one bringing it up to the bow down goes Bino Bino yet to get a kill in this matchup
He's the only one held off the score sheet so far. There's no real agility support right now
It's gonna rest more on the shoulders of silo and Mike W, but they're getting picked apart
It's silo in a 1v3 now his packer is also out dual newers walking in with that new assault rifle in the hands of the doke
Be tucked into the corner. You had some ideas about this doc. Could be
Newer's using her so successfully.
Six and oh, three logic bombs still in pockets.
Why not use it at that point in time?
There's 15 seconds left.
He dies to Silo that's utility wasted.
Now Kino and NJR will need to hold this one down.
Kino will shorten the round.
If he keeps going down, NJR posted up mailbox.
The man is as good as ever in that position.
He's looking to go out of this round without a death.
He and NJR, or he and Newer, it's not dead yet.
Newer is obviously breaking that streak, so now it's all up to NJ to stay alive.
Silo wanders and NJ are the final kills, still Immortal and DZ just running away with this game.
Feels like another day at the office for Dark Zero.
It's not perfect siege that we're seeing being played by them.
Like there are little mistakes.
The Mistrone earlier losing to a couple C4s, maybe not getting the best value of Dokobie,
but you can tell that for Dark Zero, they just don't seem to care if there's one or two things that go wrong.
They're so well coordinated in those late rounds.
They know their objective they can play around that diffuse kit 3d1 up against silo feeling very confident very composed in that moment
So good to see dark zero finding this success both early round and late round one of 30
Sorry for fun e-sports
30
Again, we'll catch it. We'll catch it
Again, this is a very top opening game for them plans the best team in the world
I like some of the stuff we've seen in terms of the nitros and the ideas on the strategies
But when it comes down to the raw gunfights when it comes down to the coordination
It feels like dark zero is always in a bit of a man advantage
Which makes it so difficult for for fun to get anything going
Yeah, it honestly seems like no matter what they do opening picks only action for fun
It might be a very small foothold Jesse, but that is it easy just overwhelming over lungsing from that point on
And I mean, it's it's for fun now getting
You know landing the first punch more than we saw in a dark zero three to those opening picks dead even before we saw
Packard take care of Jane I know but DZ's like and we lose somebody early who really cares the opening death on the side of dark zero
Has been three separate players you think that maybe if you take down one of the opening fraggers
You take down a support player or the sentence is another operator. We were talking about
That maybe that would knock DZ off strong
But no every single opening death on dark zero has been a different player
there. You know, folks, Jane, I know these are auxiliary guys for the most part. Those
aren't your three. Those aren't your two main entries on a lot of these executes, but still
like if you lose the support, if you lose your heavy utility ops, usually the round
goes with it. That's not the case for DZ. And I mean, they look as formidable as ever.
False droning the back bar this time around. We don't make that mistake twice. Good to
see captain Z, but there's no room to find to make W playing this one passive. And this
is standard play, but I really like it coming through from the guys on for fun. The first
time around, you do something aggressive, it catches the enemy team off guard, it more or less works for you.
The second time, you don't do it, but the threat of you doing it is going to slow down the clear a little bit from Dark Zero.
This is not a team we're going to struggle with the full map clear of Cafe, but even still, it's going to take a little bit of extra time to clear through.
They've actually brought the mute chambers as well from Mike W this time, so you're not 100% confident on who could be clear.
It's going to waste even more time, but now Dark Zero have realized the game, and they even shot down Mike W trying to make an impressive play on board.
I think me and the Desk did a very good job hyping up Mike W's impact here, and really does not confel.
Mind you, the most kills from anybody on the side of For Fun is now Packer with three.
Three kills as Top Frag after six rounds is really not going to get the job done, so Mike W's two kills, not lagging that far behind,
behind but obviously the offense having some serious problems here and GZ is now in full control
of this mid-floor. I don't see this getting any better for 4-fun unless they're able to knock
somebody off stride by playing those angles opened up by dark zero but as you can see no nitro
cells remain nothing really in pocket to shut this down outside of maybe a Goyo canister beyond
that 4-fun's just gonna have to go for straight gun fights and so far GZ that has not been in their
your wheelhouse. Your friends will smoke in the drop in the freezer. They're gonna have to vault this one for a plant position, but that's no issue for Kino. He is here with the shields on his back and start the plant. Four players up for four funds. Someone's got to do something in its packer.
Nobody's watching. Kino gets taken down. How does this happen? Packer now ascending the stairs. He looked to retake that middle portion silo on the board. Dark zero has been really good from about the 45 second remaining mark onward. That is not the case here in this round.
Phelps still holding some of that control. We'll now get rid of Packer to a 3v3. These teams will go with very limited time.
NJR holding that cross. A position that we know is not as familiar as it gets. A nice win by Jane I know on the silo.
What is he fighting? Fulspur? He'll pick up that defuse kit. He has another in freezer. Losing the duel. Bino will survive.
Unless Fulps can win the engagement, he will not. What a scrappy finish.
My goodness, I mean, you take the wins you can get.
They are not coming easily for this four-fond team,
but they survived the first half with two rounds.
Well, it's the top frag and the bottom frag
that really come alive in that sixth round, Parker.
We'll see what our desk has to say
about those first six rounds.
Well, dark zero, they have not skipped a beat here,
flying out of the gates, four to two so far at the half, Leo.
exactly what you want to see if you're a DZ fan, they're keeping up that momentum from SLC.
Not entirely, not exactly, it should have been a 5-1, let's be honest, they should have won that
round, they should have won that round, but let's be honest, it feels like they're playing perfect
most of the time. Really clear setup, the same one that won them SLC by the way on Cafe, you have
noors on one side of the map, most of the time on Snow balcony, who's there to create pressure,
there to create phantom pressure, that creates movements, and then the rest of the team, the
core of the team that punishes movement with the DMRs, and if you just look at the statistics
between Nuerz and Kino and you see both of them actually doing incredible and and with look at this like 7-2-7-10
Perfect and I think that's the important dynamic here especially is Kino's playing with the team
He's opening up rounds
He's opening up a little bit of the site and then you have Nuerz on that back end that is slowly
Working his way around the map finding openings in that one round when they were inside fireplace
He sneaks in the library gets that kill on the mirror had it down in pillars
I mean, there's really not a lot for this for fun team to be able to move around because this Phantom pressure that you've talked about
Time and time again. Newers is doing such a good job at that
But really how when I'm looking at this a lot of for fun really just needs to stop moving
I mean they got rid of the solace they got rid of the pulse
Okay, you get rid of your information that you don't have but you have the mirror for a top site on bar
But you're dying behind your mirror your mirror isn't even open. So it just leaves the question
They're just moving around a little too much around the bronze. They're clear
I mean I don't know in what world flanking up brown stairs, which is the most exposed staircase that you're gonna try that when you know
You have no players on a mid floor. You have no players on the top floor
What world do you think you're gonna sneak up brown on the team like dark zero just doesn't make sense?
Somehow they won that round that really shouldn't have happened DZ at the entire setup
They had the operators to go for the execute just a little bit too scrap at that point
I think they were playing a little too ahead of themselves
But again, I mean this really has been more in control for dark zero regardless of a 4-2
So Leo's here to say you're not seeing enough from for fun right now to see that they could take the second half and end up
Bebrane this one back. I'm seeing for faith not for fun. That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm seeing right now
I'm seeing a team that's giving up and the reality is they're trying to find solutions with I won't blame them for that
They went for a turtle a turtle double-willed in a old closed everything up because they were afraid of moving too much
But if there's just from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum
You need a little bit of balance and if you want to get aggressive at the right moment
then just don't do that in the middle of the round.
But they're switching to attack.
It's the weak side.
It's going to be scary, follow up.
And this is what you see.
I mean, it's clearly two different pedigrees
of two different levels of a team.
I mean, you have DZ, the SLC champions,
and you have four fun that is an up-and-coming team.
I mean, you can clearly see the discrepancy between the two.
But for me, it's for them.
I mean, you talked of this.
If they're going to go to one of DZ's favorite maps,
they have a lot of bots.
If this is what your prep and everything went into,
it makes it even worse going on to attack,
where we highlighted them in their M80 game,
they did find success.
Jesse, who talked about, they went three and a half
on that defense.
Now they're only going two on the half on their defense.
Now they're starting an attack,
and that's where they struggled against M80.
Now you're gonna try to find some sort of success
when your defense is statistically and arguably
the easier side, and you have to prep,
what is the attack going to look like?
They remove Azami, which makes sense on cafes,
and it's a given, right, just for piano.
And then they remove Mira,
which is something that I don't want to be struggling with,
problem solving.
Okay, that leaves a lot open on the side of Dark Zero,
the like Intel gathering, full world, you know,
look at the drop apparatus with one mind and so on.
It will be a lot to problem solve.
And honestly, I just see them struggling on attack.
I mean, absolutely.
I mean, I think they're playing that top side correctly.
They're using the mutes, they're using the thorns.
They don't need the mirrors
because they have all of the information
just with those traps alone.
So yeah, this is gonna be a tough one to dig out of.
Yeah, big second half or four fun
to see if they can pull this one off.
Barker, Jesse, back to you.
I greatly appreciate it, Gents.
Thank you so much for that.
For fun, you'll now have to deal with
what many consider to be the more challenging side
of this map, which is attacking on it.
That's been discussed, how those struggles might come across.
I will say, if defending is any indication,
it not always is, Jesse, but for fun,
we're not a bad team in the opening moments of the round.
On attack, that can have a profound impact
on how the defenders to then scramble to adjust.
So you can knock DZ off stride on these defenses,
take out a PC utility, or take out a really terrific player.
Like if you shut down Kino or NJR,
even you were really early,
you have a much better opportunity
than I think you did defending.
But I mean, DZ so far has not looked like
they can be knocked off their stride at all.
Yeah, it's a big if in that statement.
Parker, it's really tough to knock DZ off their stride.
They're gonna come in here and defend mining and dining.
This is their most dominant bombsite across any of the nine maps.
They played it ten times throughout the season so far.
They have an eight and two record. They are extremely proficient.
When it comes to defending on mining and dining, I'll repeat myself for fun.
When they played this map and kickoff, they didn't win a single attack on any bombsite for four rounds.
So this is going to be a challenge for them coming into the second half down by two on the scoreboard.
But opportunities, if they can find that entry, and an opportunity freebie, Kino not knowing
the angle exactly how he wanted, and Packer will find an elbow leads to a frag.
That's a bit of a striking position to be in 4-dark 0, but I mean when opportunity arises
you need to seize the opportunity, and that's exactly what 4-fun did.
It'll be the fourth time in seven rounds that 4-fun will strike first.
That is obviously not great 4-dark 0, but the scoreline suggests it's not the end of
the world. The question will be what can they translate this to?
Bino confronted with double magnets put up on the top of white stairs. Down goes
Foltz to the entry for 4-4. In mighty good shape, Jain I know will greet Bino quite
handily. He has another lined up. Will he take the engagement or does Jain I know
scamper off of this spot? I already like what we're seeing for 4-4 here Jesse. It
certainly looks like they're about to break this streak and all they need to do
is find newers. We'll immediately vacate the premises down below. He will go but
My oh my four players from for fun still upright
This will be a daunting task for a really good gunner on the side of DZ
But most players wouldn't be able to get themselves out of this spot
Yeah, 60 seconds plus on the clock for newers. He's got so much time to play with the four fun guys
They will have to recover that a few skit
But you know drop the top floor I do believe so it shouldn't be difficult to retrieve it at this point
They're taking their time to drone this out Mike W spots out the bomb
And of course they're gonna know where this last player is too as they start to eliminate these rooms
Newer's needs a free pick and there's the first
Well as long as you can isolate these engagements he'll be in a good spot
And I mean it's also the black beer that you take down so that's really nice to get rid of the shield operator
Fortunately, I know where he is and they're gonna close in on him Mike W gets the final kill as the bodies were
Swarming newers not much to celebrate here on the face of four fun eSports who now find themselves a single round back of the major champs
I locked in Parker and that's a really big round to win, especially with such a dominant
fashion.
I told you the stats as the round began, but still good to see four fun e-sports coming
through getting that victory.
It was a real focus on white stairs.
We were watching the Blackbeard upstairs on that kind of bathroom hall window tossing
in those nades and he was having a bit of a tough time.
Bino couldn't really find that space.
So what happens?
Silo actually walks in bottom white and he finds the frag on default who was playing
the White Stairs position without second angle down. It allows the swing to come through
from Bino. It allows pressure to come through onto Jaina I know. Sure, Jack wins that fight,
tough for Bino, but it's okay. The traits come out. The 4v1 versus Newers. I actually
think there's a world where he clutches it, but again, it just seems like there was a
bit of an angle that Newers wasn't watching, wasn't able to see as it comes through him,
much like the Kino death earlier in that round. So a couple of tight angles go to where you
more fun and they're still very much in this game.
So is a world where a clutch works, right?
You always need a helping hand from your opponents.
If 4-fun was a less disciplined team, Jesse,
and they did take those engagements one by one by one
by one and Newers could isolate each of them,
it is far more winnable, especially when you look at that,
that train portion of the map.
There's a couple of hard services in there,
as our observers now move us over towards it,
where you can easily hide and the bullets
can't shoot you through that floor or that wall.
Obviously, 4-fun were a bit more disciplined than that,
which is good to see, and I will tell you right now.
As close as they might have come to a berth at Salt Lake City.
The first half, even when they were losing rounds,
Four Fun did look like they were playing tighter as a team.
Now, whether this carries on to the remainder of stage one
or whether this nets them a better result
than we saw during kickoff remains to be seen.
But I think you can very quickly assess
that there is improvement here on this Four Fun team.
But the problem, Jesse, most of these teams,
especially the ones that went to Salt Lake City,
have also improved and the ones that weren't very good,
a lot of them have made roster moves
and on paper certainly look like they've improved too.
So for FUNNNN we need to match that,
they need to exceed that,
as this is a team that stood back with their roster
and are hoping to knock off the major champs,
match number one.
Yeah, I mean sometimes thought about improving,
just about changing things up to be unexpected.
Despite this being to calm and map for Dark Zero,
they've changed things up a little bit.
They've put newers on the Falkery.
Usually here runs the Aruni on this site,
so changing things up a little bit,
I catch them off guard, it's a Nitro, but it's in quite land where he wants it to.
It's a distraction for the run out, even better.
You know, gets the kill with the trade, and then his maid actually finds newers.
So somehow it's a double for the captain and man advantage for the underdogs here in round eight.
Mike W. Tegan down, Bino, the second highest rated player during kickoff for one of 30.
He's found himself a third kill Jesse as he's running riot over this dark zero team
They had a triumphant first half, but DZ is about to lose the lead that they built up
Beena with three kills now getting the peace kids down
J9O's position announced and silo will get the final kill. We have a tie game and what a game it's been
The captain from California
the first half of the season.
He's got a really big play to
come through there. He gets
that triple again. Shenanigans
with the name kill up on the
top floor, but they don't ask
how massive three K and don't
forget. It was Beano's clutch
that got them that second round
back in the first half that got
this to a 42 split rather than
a 51. So you lean on your
captain to give you hope at the
end of the first half, and now
four fun esports. What a statement through these last few rounds.
inability to give away their mental to their opponents. Even after they got
shellacked in map number one of those grand finals, they knew they were gonna
lose labs to Shopify Rebellion. They probably knew they were gonna win
Chalet, but they never lost their mental and this was a team that even when
things would go bad for them in the kickoff best of threes narrow almost
losing to Wildcard and M80. This was a team that buckled down in the best of
ones. You don't have that opportunity Jesse. You don't have a second and third
map to gracefully recover. So if Darkseer are unable to dig their way out of this map,
there's a possibility that Best of Ones could be a tougher go for Darkseer. Now that they have
tougher competition here in Stage 1, rather than the competition they had back in their kickoff group.
You can tell 4 Fighting Sports, they want it as well. This is their first time playing under
this organization. They want to have a strong start to hype up new fans, get everybody excited
for this new look of the new team. I think Bino in particular excited to be
representing a professional organization. He's played 37 straight pro
matches or less. Whether that was the kickoff that we saw last season under the
standby LFO roster even going back to the Montreal Major with CL for life. This
man has essentially never been signed to a pro org. Now he's here playing in tier
one with a banner to represent and he's playing so well because of it.
There's only two players on this team of 1-30 who were in the top half of the standings.
The last kickoff, you know, is 1-T4, which just gets him in, given that there are 50
players.
Mike W is really the only positive standout.
The rest of the team wasn't that far behind, to their credit.
They weren't definitely basement dwellers, like you might expect from a team that failed
to make the major, but, again, Volsper was somebody that we talked about quite a lot.
He's having a bit of a quiet game here.
Four and six his scoreline leadoff pick by silo to go even Mike W in the ground eight kills tied with Packer
Leading the server right now in deaths. That's every single round the Packer and Mike W have died
Or Mike W surviving one more round if Packer dies here. It'll be every round
Those are not exactly numbers you want to see from these two guys who are capable of taking over a round
It's like just an aggressive beat from NJR. He's playing inside of dining and then Mike W goes out outside her garage door
So sometimes these aggressive plays from DZ, they can really come through and apply the pressure for 4-fun.
They were providing their own pressure on default, but it's a one-on-one exchange that DarkZero will be happy with.
Now they can waste even more time.
JNINO repositions aggressively inside Piano.
No one in the building for 4-fun esports, so this top floor is clear.
It hasn't really been focused on, it hasn't been the goal, it's not been something they've been able to do.
Now with 75 seconds, DarkZero fall back towards the site, ready for the score before.
NJR will find his second literally the moment you finish talking Jesse down goes Volsper to DZ not wanting to forfeit any more of these defender rounds to their opponents
They've allowed one of 30s to maintain a pulse, but that's about it because the pulse check that's about to happen
It's gonna find out that this attack from for fun will be dead on arrival
One of 30s old teams
Struggled with the closeout of maps for fun now might have this same issue same
core different organization that they're playing under. And this four fun team is
yet to lead here on CafeJesse. Round number one went to Dark Zero, immediately tied up
by four fun. DZ went on a run, four fun went on a run. They've never been able to
overcome that hump, and it will have to take at least two more rounds as DZ put
an exclamation point on round number nine, regained their lead. It's been a tough
go of it for the defending major champs. This has been quite a good run for four
fun, but again, you could draw even, but you've got to get the lead and you've got
to get the win if you're hoping to blunt whatever momentum Dark Zero is trying to carry over from that live event.
Yeah, attack timeout from Coach Callout seems to work exactly as it's expected to Dark Zero.
Strong third defense there to get themselves on the board in the second half.
They can remove the Nomad now as they head into their final three rounds of regulation.
Neuer is breaking double digits in that last round.
He had 266 kills throughout the season before today.
So he's really been rocking them up for DC of course on their long run to that major championship.
a couple months ago or a month ago now in Salt Lake City.
Again, I like the aggression from NJR in this round.
She's able to get kind of aggro to get that first frag,
and then they continue with those kills,
being able to stop some of those early bits of aggression
where Forfun are poking towards the bomb sites.
Never got that top floor control under their grasp,
so have to find different ways towards the site,
and they weren't letting them in on the side of DZ.
He was breaking double digits.
He's the only one that's been able to do so at this point.
NJR is not too far behind and Kino again having a really good start here on day one of the NA League.
Does it remind me again? Kino was the highest rated player on Dark Zero for two or three games
back during kickoff. Memory serves correctly before coming back down to Earth. But I mean,
if Kino was able to frag well, which has always been kind of a criticism of Kino on previous
rosters, granted the roles he plays don't usually work very well from a killing perspective,
particularly on a task. He's going to be running shields most of the time. If Kino can
frag well and the rest of the team can surround themselves or surround him rather with the support
that they need, they're in really good shape. And I will say if you go back to Salt Lake City
Major and you look at kickoff, a lot of these players had big pop-off moments. I think everybody
on the team top fragged at least one or two games during Salt Lake City, so depth is always a good
thing. And again, we said this in the first half. Oh my goodness. We said this in the first half,
Jesse, if you get the opening pick onto DZ and it's a different player every time and it does not knock them off stride
That is a great thing for this dark zero squad. The depth that they have is terrific
That was a nice run out by the way Packer five and ten. He's now died every single round. That's a rough start for for fun
It's gonna DZ it's since taking that tack time out have been happy to get aggressive fight some of these window positions
You're going for the run out that time as you mentioned so really good to see some of that aggro come from DZ
Gonna be a bit more focused on the top floor clear. We're running back the middle floor sites
This is our fourth round in a row. DZ yet to go top floor or into the kitchen
Almost a freebie they find it eventually. Valspar lands the headshot on default
It was a good drone to give them that information not expecting crouch height perhaps
But it's okay because they collapse from the window in the stairs and they equalize the man counts now
And a 4v4 with over half the round to go 4 funner in a much more confident position
They've got Bino on this Monty as well.
I'm really excited to see where he wants to enter through.
He just dropped in through red, so it'll be this top floor clear that they used to shield.
And J9O entrenched in this position, sees the Monty, what does not do much to Bino,
and now gets more information, hoping that Bino, when he turns to go towards that white door,
gets picked apart, Neurs gets into the nitro cell, super short, he is out!
There's immediate follow-up from Neurs, a nice 1-2 punch from DarkZero there to save themselves,
a headache that would have come, should 4 fun and punish them on the top floor.
Now it's all up to Sylo and Mike W. They'd have normal to see Mike W with the lowest
frags on 4 fun, doesn't necessarily go well for their chances here, Jesse.
As much as we congle the Dark Zero for their depth, I don't think we can say the same about
4 fun just yet, so if Mike W's having a rough day, there's a high likelihood 4 fun is also
gonna have a rough day. This might be his opportunity to turn it around though,
Parker finds three more kills draws close to even he's got silo by his side but the time is not going
to favor them they want to drop this from piano straight in sight aggressive from njr and he'll
hit double digits in a 3d one to my value and my w gets nothing kino with yet another dz back to
their winning ways two rounds in a row and they find themselves on match point for fun putting
in a better effort than what we might have expected especially on this second half of cafe but i mean
If you ever have an opportunity to knock off a major champ, it's probably going to come in a best of one.
It'll be relatively fair ground with the map you play on, just because map pools won't be as important as a best of three or a best of five.
And I will say the better team does not always win a best of one.
Maybe the better team that day and in that moment, but not consistently.
The best team will usually always win a best of five.
So for here, dark zero, well, you might have suffered a scare.
I don't think that's going to come to pass.
DZ certainly looking like the better team.
Jesse in four funs, still have some work to be done.
But of course, anything can happen over the next two rounds,
but DZ very firmly in the driver's seat.
Dark zero.
Hunting for their seventh win in a row,
if they can win one of these next two rounds,
they will be nine and one in their last 10 games again.
Really going on a streak after their first loss
in the Salt Lake City Major.
they went undefeated for a playoffs or course but also the last couple games of Swiss so this dark
zero teams so devastating when you go up against them for funny sports frankly they've not done too
bad on this match up by a billion we got two rounds against easy in the slc finals so by that
metric for fun or twice the team SR it's not big it really works now I mean I don't I appreciate
What you're going for here, but I don't think it's quite quite that simple again
I think for fun has made some made some advances as an organization and as a team
And of course now they've got funding. They're not playing for free anymore for fun not for free
Everybody's well have been playing for free when they were one of 30 they didn't have a salary
But again, everybody is going to be improved
We had a massive seed change with a lot of these teams during kickoff and because of that so many rosters
needed more than just a week or two to find their own footing.
Look at a hundred thieves for crying out loud.
On paper, we thought this is a team that can definitely contend for a playoff spot.
And they finished as one of the two worst rated teams during kickoff.
They've now obviously got a better roster or so we think with hot and cold and casein, but again,
speculation only gets us so far.
So for a team like 4 Fun, you've got to ensure that your improvement outmatches that of your counterparts.
And I mean, it's gonna be really hard to tell how good this team is when the first team they have to play up against just starts here after.
I think that gives us a really good idea of their potential.
Electric Law on the Freezer Hatch means the Packers gonna have to take a little bit more time to clear this out,
but if you toss two of those X-Cyrus Pulse right next to the hatch, the explosion's usually big enough to destroy the Electric Law.
Looks like it didn't find its mark that first set, so he'll go again on both the left and the right.
And...
Surely.
The cloth's still not blown up. We're aware it's his electroclaw.
He's doing his best. He's kind of hunting through it for the gates now.
It's outside the building! You're kidding, bro.
Oh, that is nasty.
I was like, why is it the Hobota destroying it?
Surely it should be able to find the cloth.
You think they'll find it? You think they'll be able to pull it off you?
Finally got it. Silo gets it.
There's a minute left to go in the round.
around the damage at this point surely has been done.
And now Packer is completely out of exkiros.
Do they manage to get it open?
That is a great question.
They might be locked out of a freezer drum.
They got it, I'm pretty sure.
They had eight when he called for his teammates to find it,
so they should be fine.
Thank goodness.
Our attention was focused a little bit elsewhere.
Kino will pick up his 10th kill,
breaking double digits, joining NJR and Neurs.
Down goes Neurs with the hands of Silo
and a drop into freezer.
As you are correct, they have opened that hatch up.
They're gonna go for the death drop, and we call it that because usually you end up dying.
Fools for understood the mission.
He died at the hands of Jane I know, Scorpion being unloaded into the freezer.
It'll leave Vino in a do or die situation.
He's hoping for coverage over on white stairs.
Down goes Foltz.
No more gas casters available.
Should there have been any in pocket.
Silo dropped.
There goes Jane I know.
NJR is gone as well.
It's Kino to save the day.
Mike W will look to watch over top of Vino.
And Vino's gonna get the job done himself.
Okay, never mind.
Mike W. Who?
Excellent play from Bino yet again single-handedly willing his team
Into the win column more than once and we'll go at all 12 rounds
This four fun have an opportunity to win yet another and send us to OT against the defending major champs
All right, so just a quick recap right four fun eSports have won five rounds so far against start zero
First it was a 1v2 clutch for Bino
Then it was a 1v3 clutch for Bino
Then it was a regular round, then it was a triple kill from Bino, and then it was this round where he perfectly pulls off the defuse kit.
So Scott Jain I know flanking in from BIP wins the final 1v1 against Kino, he had Mike W as a teammate around that too, but took the 1v1 duel and found success with it.
has been the best player of Rekorka in eSports, statistically and I think just by watching
him play, the kills he is getting are so highly impactful and he is dragging this team to
go close with the best team in the world.
Again, best of ones are usually, pardon the turn of phrase here, typically a bit of a
crap shoot and I mean I think DZ is, DZ is seeing that right now, definitely not the defender
side that we had expected on Cafe.
This been an attacking game through and through and if you go back and look at the Salt Lake
City numbers and some of the kickoff numbers too, up is down and down is up with some of these maps
Jesse, just nowhere near what we come to expect from what was a very defender side of
meta just about a year ago. Things have changed and attackers actually have the upper hand
on a wide variety of bomb sites and maps that we didn't expect. Is Cafe one of those?
One of those, well it's far too soon to tell, especially with a new Operator proving to be quite a menace.
Jokobi obviously was banned out by Dark Zero, so we haven't seen her on the second half, but you did correctly point out that if we go to overtime, Dizzy will be able to use her for their attacks.
So, if 4-fun prevail here, the newest revamped, powerful Operator will be seen yet again, and honestly, Kudos to 4-fun for the way that they're dealing with this without having Jokobi at their disposal.
They're finding some good opportunities to get these attacks down.
The shield play from Bino has been a highlight, but the clutch play as well has been huge for four fun.
Now with one more round to go, they have to be able to win this bombsite that DZ had been so dominant on.
Nine and three record now on Mining and Dining for those keeping track.
They've won it once and lost it once already in this best of one.
With the Aruni ban, Nuerz will have to change his operator up, but he just wants the DMR, so the two brow is fine.
top floor hold yet to be disruptive from dark zero. Oh no. Not ideal, but he gets a little
bit of an angle still, maybe.
I don't think that's the case. I think that was a...
Swing and a miss there, Jesse. He was on the board first, immediately traded off by
Sylo. How many times have we seen a snake very selfishly refrag? That's the name of
the game for this operator at this current point in time, and with the FAMAS in hand,
that thing can just absolutely shred. We've seen it since Snake was added to the operator
Their pool, nice play by J9O, almost finds two targets.
He'll settle for one at this point,
as NJR cleans up what remains a silo.
A really spirited effort by 4-Fun here, Jesse,
but a 4v2 for DZ with a minute to go.
I fear that we might not need overtime
to settle this affair.
J9O gets kills in positions that nobody has any business
finding frags in less than 60 seconds now,
two v4 disadvantage for 4-Fun.
The fuse kit being held by J9O as well,
so they just don't have the tools to win this round
as they're hunting for a miracle.
Yeah, I mean, a miracle is really all they can hope for at this current point in time.
Down goes Mike W, a really disappointing series for him as DZ ends up winning this 7-5.
I mean, that last round was a bit deflating for these four fun guys,
and DZ just makes them look a little boring, but hey,
you can be a boring team when you've got a major championship.
Big win for Dark Zero, the defending major champions.
Getting pushed to the brink, but ultimately outmuscle.
The debut of a new organization, the anti-league of four fun 7-5 to score a line for DZ.
The president loses re-election and the mayor finds the votes today. Parker, it is dark zero who are able to win the first match of stage one in the North America League.
Beautiful stuff coming through from our major champions. They're looking right back in form, I guess 1 of 30.
You
I
the end there, but the major
champs come out and take the
win. We're standing by with
one of those major champs now.
Newers is ready to go.
Congratulations on starting out
the stage with a win. Tell me a
little bit about what these last
couple of weeks have been like.
You lift the trophy and then all
of a sudden you have to prep for
a stage. Have you guys been
All of a sudden you have to prep for a stage.
Have you guys been working hard?
Prepping, has it been a little bit of a break?
Tell me what this has been like for you.
I mean, it's been a lot.
We obviously know everyone's seen what we do during those games.
So we had to switch up a lot of stuff
and a bunch of different micros and stuff.
So it was a lot of work.
But in the end, it was definitely a good couple of weeks.
Well, there was I want to congratulate you on the win.
Obviously, I want to see more of a smile from you.
I know you got those pearly whites going, I think,
actually I think he's frozen now no way he's staring down me like that.
Did he just get there?
That's what a lot of people do with you like they just don't want to talk to you.
That's unfortunate.
Yeah, try to take the loss and just cut into it.
They take the win.
They take the loss.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The loss in the end.
Like he announced it in SLC.
Alright.
Taking the loss.
I love this.
I mean we're just having this.
We're gonna have this the whole night.
I'm kind of excited.
I wanted to ask you a question.
Well, tell me a little bit about what you were going to get into here because what we
we saw from DarkZero was a little bit of a different look in some areas.
So, here's the thing, right?
You're on a different side of the map.
Café.
You're winning 4-2 when you switch to defense.
I'm expecting you to play safe.
You don't play safe!
You look at round 10, who's jumping out here,
and you are going super aggressive,
oh no, Jenna, you're going super aggressive,
and getting a first pick.
And you look at round 9,
and it's the same story,
this time on Basement,
what are these guys doing?
Getting super aggressive again.
The first will die, but then look,
and Jar will go and get the trade.
And a round before that, again, still in the first minute of the round.
Who do we see with the SMG11 jump out here off-white?
NJR again.
And honestly, he ran out of ammo.
He probably could have grabbed that if he didn't waste too much on the first guy.
But it just shows how aggressive that they play.
Yeah, it's a weird one for me, because I think in a shoot of dark zero,
I'm the better team here.
I'm in a safe position.
I've got the two rounds lead, and I'm on the best side.
Why do I need to get super aggressive?
I think that's the thing, though.
I think that will always stay true with this team and just how they act
is they will always be aggressive.
It doesn't matter who they're playing against.
And I think that's something that speaks true for them.
And that always will resonate with this team
as they will always be as brazen as they possibly can.
And they're going to double down on their aggressive nature.
Because it does, it is what honestly carries them
through a lot of their games.
But I do agree.
I think a little bit of discipline sprinkled in there.
This could have been a cleaner series.
But either way, they got it done in regulation.
They get the full three points.
They're sitting pretty either way.
Yeah, we can overwrite on this as much as we want in terms
of, oh, we got a little bit closer.
Maybe they could have done it a little bit better.
But Leo, at the end of the day, dark zero.
they came out and they got the job done.
Yeah, it was a bit too close for Confort
and it would be easy to say it's just on Dark Zero's fault
not to be disciplined,
but I actually want to praise Forfun.
We stated before they have the potential to convent,
to contend with some of the best of NA
and honestly they've done it.
You know, they brought certain rounds back.
I think Vino especially, you know, for sure.
He brought three rounds back.
A 1v3, the 1v1 with a Monty as well, impressive.
I mean, and you don't necessarily want to rely
on someone to have a pop-off performance,
have pop-off rounds.
But especially when your IGL's doing,
Abino's getting 3Ks back to back to back,
keeping you guys in the series, keeping it going.
I mean, it definitely speaks into existence
that these guys still are keeping it competitive,
that they aren't just rolling over.
I mean, a lot of the opening kills,
they were getting some going into their favor.
Again, I think the biggest thing for me
and some that you were hitting on,
especially on those attacks, they were so spread out.
They weren't really in scenarios
where they were able to go for a trade.
So if they were to go back and rewatch this
and what they could have done differently,
I think it's just simply just doubling up somewhere, having someone ready to go for a trade.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I'd adapt.
Like, that's the main thing for me, right?
They were super spread out, like you said.
And if you see that it's not working, if you see that you're consistently facing early
aggression in the first minute, and there's no way for you to trade that abundant kill,
why do you not react and go with a shield and a core team that plays next to each other?
I mean, whether it's shields, whether it's claymores, whether it's more information,
whether it's doubling up, I mean, there's a plethora of things that they could do to
identify, OK, if a team wants to play aggressive,
let's punish that.
Let's constantly get the opening kill going over our favor.
And then do exactly what DZ was doing really well with them
is once they got that opening pick,
once they had that phantom pressure coming over from Neuers,
they would slowly converge onto that defense of that site
and just constrict it where there was no room for movement.
There wasn't no room for a play to be made.
And it just would get scrappy where they would just
try to make something work.
And it wasn't.
I think if they just take some of those
and doctrineate a few different styles of play,
again, there's still a lot left where this is only
the first day for them.
So there is a lot more of improvement that we can see from the seam and I'm excited to see what we will see
Yeah, it's clear that for fun has that same spark has that same flight that they had in kickoff
It's like can they build from that? That's the question
We'll see as you said, this is just the very beginning here our first match of our first playday here in stage one our second match
M80 and a big roster move that grabbed all the headlines over the last few weeks leading up to SLC
Well, we're gonna get into that in just a few minutes. It is m80 ssg next
Oh
headlines after a lackluster performance in kickoff and then immediately dropping their legendary IGL hot and cold was cast to the curb was incidentally sent to the major, but they pick up Savage from team secret in his place.
Now listen, I'm not going to jump on the Savage bandwagon. No discredit to Savage. He's a phenomenal IGL. He's made tremendous strides, winning EWC second runner up at the most recent SI.
However, when you look at the pedigree and the team that he is joining,
look at any one of those players.
Who did they find their success with?
It was only with Hot and Cold.
Even when they split after these posts,
they went their separate ways.
Who was the only people that continued to find success?
Hot and Cold. He went to SI and made him bombed out.
They didn't find any success.
They come back together.
They bring Kino back.
They find success.
Now they split again.
They had a horrible stage.
They end up making a change.
They get rid of Hot and Cold.
So for me, it's less about Savage coming onto this team
and what he can do. It's more so how are the players going to be able to integrate Savage
into them and be able to have success long term because as we know at M80 their success short
term they make too many changes to give any team in roster a chance long term. Yeah I understand
the point let me just underline the irony that they fired an American IGL to bring a European IGL
and let's just notice one thing I think that Savage is bringing the modern vision of the game.
I think that, yes, in fact, the hotend cold was maybe the only available IGL that allowed them to reach that height.
But I think that it's the worst to gamble, because, like you said, MAT was successful only in the short run.
Bringing Savage, I think, just like Fabian tweeted, by the way, I think is the last missing piece they needed.
A modern IGL, someone that has had the experience of winning a major event, EWC, last year, that reached the grand final of SI.
Look at what Fabian was saying. Very happy we could get Lucas on this roster.
his style, his combination with the Firepower and the Aggression, everything that makes Savage
one of the best ideas in the world is his knowledge of modern siege, his ability to take
some incredible Firepower and make it work. With the stars on this lineup, on M80, with the Firepower
that you have here, you have some gem and you put them beats here on your cheerleaders.
Lacks are there any concerns that this is Savage's first big roster change in like four years? He
He hasn't had that chance to bounce around, build that chemistry.
Yeah, and I think that's also another big thing for me, especially when you're comparing
the two of hot and cold and savage, and just even in terms of their accolades, in terms
of their history, we're talking about knowledge.
Obviously, you're talking about a modern revolutionized and what they can bring.
But hot and cold has been there since day one.
He's played on flipside tactics all the way up until this point.
Now on 100 Thieves, I mean, that experience really does showcase.
I mean, you can clearly see 19 STU events versus eight, three top three finishes, two
for savage.
Honestly, I got to get commending.
I mean, very early into his career,
he's already making a very good headway, very good run.
But again, you have to look at the players.
You can't look at Savage.
And what Savage did manage to do was with newer players.
So he was easily able to mold these players
while his growth was also with them,
where he's coming onto a vetted team, a vetted roster
that already has their structure.
He's not creating that structure.
And if you just even look, he abandoned
shift of what's been happening on Secret.
So are you going to bring that exact same thing
where Secret started to fall off onto an MAD roster?
Or are you going to try to now take on what M80 has been trying to replicate now without Hanco?
Leo, I know you're skeptical of this, but we're going to get into the map bans to see exactly how this one played out just a little bit.
A best of one. Anything could happen here, even though SSG is that young group even treated, but we go to Bank to go for this one.
I am getting treated. Lax, I need you to answer one question. Who was the best bang team in the world last season?
I think there's no secret.
It was Team Secret, 17 win streak. Who was the IG on Team Secret?
On Team Secret, when they had a 17 win streak on base.
Savage.
Alright, shouldn't it be cool to see Savage play with Naiti on the one map where he was able to build one of the longest win streak ever?
But what you don't understand is, Amity has yet to play it.
They have yet to play it, and on top of it, they're going against base station.
They annihilated and they annihilated dismantled cloud nine seven one
And maybe they clung nine. I mean this should be hate watch. This should be a part of the biggest take ever of a map between these two
What did that make you get to do to you like did he
I don't know nothing to me. I was happy to see them when I mean they put they put on a on top
All right
Well as we have a tall task going up against this as Fabien said a reformed roster that seems to be clicking can Aiden
and continue that performance and go up against this M80 roster,
we'll find out, guys.
Yeah, I mean, this is going to be a real test of M80's metal, right?
This has been the organization that has been on the tip of everybody's tongues.
Since this hot and cold roster move happened, you know,
whether you're critical of the way M80 handled it,
whether you celebrate the way M80 handled it, doesn't really matter.
There's going to be people watching this with a lot of sense of pride,
and there's going to be a lot of hate watchers.
So for M80, this is a big test.
The team has had a chance to gel, as Fabian said in his tweet, Jesse.
It is a bit of a blessing in disguise that we didn't have to go to Salt Lake City.
And boy, oh boy, that's a big game that Fabian's talked.
If it blows up in his face, well, it might be a bit humiliating for him,
but I think Fabian's always been able to talk a big game
and walk away with his reputation intact.
Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt that when you watch a game from MAD,
it's going to be exciting.
And I don't think the change in IGL is going to change that for them.
It's really just going to be about getting back to that level
that we've seen MAD play at before.
This four of five players previously to the roster move
had won a major.
They had had crazy successes over the last couple of years.
They've got to do that once again.
They're up against the space station team
who I think are better than they get credit for.
But even still, MAD should be the favorites.
And I think with 64% of the votes, that lines up.
Yeah, I mean, I think when you look at the matches
that we have today, there are some clear cut favorites,
again, on paper.
but I will say like every time this emerges, you don't play the game on paper. You play it in
the server or if you're in the case of M80, I actually think they're playing like a classroom.
Not really sure what that setup is. They don't know if you're familiar with their facilities,
but that gives me some major high school vibes there and I mean hey, you play where you're
comfortable, right? Space station playing for the comfort of their own homes. Neither of these
organizations made it to Salt Lake City, so they have been doing some work in the off-season,
SSG, keeping everything intact, M80, obviously, attracting and courting quite a bit of controversy
with their hot and cold move. They are hoping that Savage is the guy to get the job done,
and we'll find out pretty quickly here on this map. As the desk said, Savage knows this map
very well. It's team secrets, inarguable best map. Does that translate to success for M80?
Doesn't always work out so clean cut, right?
certainly I mean we have to kind of see how it works on the server there's no
doubt that may be been screaming this laxing said they haven't played this
map since I think it was invites which of course was a very different team by the
location going while in the streams if they've been able to use some of those
insights that savage will be bringing over from team secret but I definitely
think I made he could get off to a hot start here in these first six rounds of
a bank dream just typed before this game began happy birthday to Gavin's mom now
now for all the stats that I have for it.
I do not have the birthdays of parents,
but going off dreams word, happy birthday to Mrs. Black
and hopefully give some good luck to M80
in this critical game versus SSG.
The mom buff is a very real thing.
I mean, we highlighted the number of players,
mothers who are at Salt Lake City,
it is always nice to see these competitors
come from loving families
where their parents support them.
It's sometimes, I say this from experience
as much as my mom is supporting me.
Playing video games is often seen as a waste of time
a lot of people but when you're playing in the big leagues the hope is that your parents can
just screw your head on screen and you know show that level of pride so tall there are siege moms
that are out there right now those of current and former competitors thank you for your support
and happy birthday to all of the the siege parents whose birthdays Jesse so selfishly does not track
well this is about to be a rush park with the lobby house being opened up the line charge will
come through they actually didn't open it fully i think maybe five bloods gonna be open so this
stall things a little bit but now the rush can begin. Yeah I mean if you've got
that that fall start when it comes to a rush things can easily get thrown as
under rain the post-casualty M80 starting off very well here. Gavin will die so they
trade them out. One minute burned on the clock in round number one and
space station are not inside the actual bomb site but as close as you can get on
this basement floor right now investing very heavily in gold and in vault. Lion
charges will go off go could be banned out so we won't get to see her for the first six rounds
it'll leave uh only a couple operators with intel available one of which was that demos that died
a bit earlier this is a small push now jesse as we hit the halfway point of the round not a bad
spot for ssg though parker aiden can drop and now they got a bit of a pinch here coming in through
vault so there's no way to play this position now close on the window this allows them to maybe
go for a plant inside a feed they can get past the hallway oh savage just shutting down aiden this
This is very first kill and the NA lead diffuser will be on the board too.
There's Dream tussling with diffuser inside of the elevator
and now it's the sights lined over towards Ashton who has his hands full.
Giddy subdues him.
It's Gunner and Savage up against Giddy, the Hibana,
who failed to open that hatch earlier on before fixing everything.
Well, now he'd either retrieve that diffuse kit or go straight for engagements
with 50 seconds to go.
He's in a bit of a tight spot, especially with that angle
being held on the stairs.
If he's found a window of opportunity though,
he's against a soft wall.
Gunner being compelled into action,
Savage not too far away, and it's a two piece
for the EU import.
Now, captain, this M80 team is,
it's M80 winning round number one.
Nice little two piece, as you said,
from the newest player on M80,
and the second newest player to join this org as well,
Ashen having a really nice contribution,
his own two piece in that first round here on bank.
You might not have caught it,
a lot of it was elsewhere on the map, but Ashen wins a very early gunfight on to Raid. Raid was solo
pushing dirt tunnel, Ashen wins that 1v1 from Cerber. Ashen then flanks up through top floor and
drops the hatch. So Ashen also follows up these attackers to get behind them. That's how he ends
up in gold. You might be thinking how the hell is there still a defender there, but
you can see the excitement on the side of M80. You can hear the hype too as they win their first
round in stage one. It's not the cleanest round. SSG catch them off guard a little bit, but they respond
really nicely to that lobby side rush. Yeah, I mean, M80 looking cool as a cucumber and things,
despite it being a 2v1, did not look anywhere near as dire for this M80 squad, as those numbers
might have suggested. I know that the average viewer might see that, oh, only two survive. That can be
a little scary, but I mean, just as we said, oftentimes with the Dark's Zero matchup, we can
can repeat the same thing with M80.
These are teams that historically and consistently
are able to do well when at a number's disadvantage
and also while at low numbers,
depth is the name of the game for every team
that sits at the top of their respective leagues.
And while neither of these teams
directly in M80 or SSG,
let's have at the top of the NA leagues,
since kickoff, I mean, we're not far removed from M80,
making triumphant runs at a number of events,
one of which netted them their own major championship
at Munich last year so M80 now with the new IGL hoping to go back to their
winning ways and round number one if it's a good indication or if it's any
indication they're in good hands. Space station had been very persistent with
how they want to play these first couple rounds Parker first it was a rush with
the Blitz and the Lion and the Finca now you're seeing the ying from rival the
glass from raid even Aiden here on the nook likely to work his way up those
lobby stairs if he wants to get maximum value out of this gadget but
There's still going to be Util around to play with.
Moods upstairs to toss at his nade won't get the castle,
but I believe this should get the barbed wire that is directly
under the window that he repelled in for.
So opening things up, working through some of this utility,
and there's the barbed wire cleared out.
So good Util clear coming up from SSG.
They're not hoping to get aggressive early with some fights.
Now, I mean, you can be passive on a big map like bank.
You usually see attackers try to set a tempo.
They did a pretty decent job around number one.
did not end up netting them the success they wanted, but now SSG will strike first here in round number two.
Halfway point up the round, the human casualties so far, rival sustaining quite a beating.
They put Gunner in the ground, he survived the entirety of the previous round,
and it jumped out from savage, you judge, K&AD asked to take the second down.
He'll settle for one. I think that's definitely worthwhile, especially with the previous round that he had.
M80 now reduced to just Gavin, his space station have pummeled the defenders in the span of about 40 seconds.
One minute still remaining on the clock.
And it's all up to Gavin.
You'll hang your hat on a player who knows this position.
He's won a couple clutches before.
There's three really good players in the side of space
station that'll look to hunt him down, just.
The highest rated player on an 80 throw kickoff.
If anyone can do it, you have to imagine it's Gavin.
Knows two players are outside on the window.
The third one dream is down in ATM.
This is the patient's game. A double swing in now as you'll hear that call.
Gavin's playing this about as patiently as you can get. He needs to be wary of those
smokes that have been put out because the glass can paralyze him in that spot. The
capital barricade will be his undoing. Gown goes dream. Down two goes the
diffuse kit. So 4M80, their job now revolves around the final 35 seconds of
that diffuse timer. Gavin's playing this really well. I will give him a lot of
credit for that. It just might be a bit more than he can chew. Nope, he gets
raided. Giddy will now go on the upside down repel and this will be a tough go of
it for Gavin. He's going to attempt the long arm, a smart play to also get the
angle onto the window. Above, he's a compelling Giddy to get into this. Giddy will go for the swing, Gavin!
The way to shut him down! Giddy wins the scramble by the skin of his country teeth
and SSG are on the board. I'm at a loss for words with what I just witnessed. Parker chaos all around
Daven plays that absolutely perfectly. He could not have done that any better. He focuses the one
solo player lobby side. He kills Raid who had actually chosen to rappel in. Often you'll see
two players just sitting on the windows but Raid decides after the plant goes down I'm just gonna
to stick around I'm gonna play it anyways and then just chaos over by the
window Gavin and Gideon the 1v1 clearly some sound issues happening for
Gavin if he's looking the wrong direction when the repellent come through
from Gideon maybe just thought he was coming in from the other side of the
top where he's looking in that moment and Gavin this is a beautiful shot to take
down raid but right here you have to repel in to stop this denial you cannot
play that from the windows and somehow wins the 1v1 beautiful from Giddy
I think this might be a this might be another exhilarating one for those that did not tune
into the dark zero four fun the eSports matchup that preceded this that four fun eSports team
was known as one of 30 last kickoff that's the packer like team well I guess packer and
to be known, technically. It's been officially the captain, Jesse. But that one went all 12 rounds.
We're obviously not going to tell you what happened with the score line, but of course,
as many people try to avoid spoilers, we are a live product. There are times where it is just
simply unavoidable here. I don't know. I mean, again, and the best of one, the better and most
prepared team does not necessarily win every contest. We saw that during kickoff. We've seen
that during group stages of live events. Unpredictability can definitely win you a couple rounds.
and in a best of one a couple rounds is the difference maker.
You don't have a second or a third map to fall back on, right?
So, yeah, maybe I have no doubt they've improved with Savage as Bobby and Hussett.
I don't think any of them are liars, Jesse, but just because you've improved in scrims
does not mean that we'll translate to game day.
Hopefully relevant for a few weeks still, but in the new playoff format,
teams only need to win a single best of three to qualify to top four
and make it to the Esports World Cup.
So being good at best of ones and trying to be consistent is oh, so important
to set yourself up in that top four where you can start in the upper bracket. You don't have to
worry about only having one life for playoffs. Again, it is game two of this game, so I won't
lead into it too much, but every match matters. We're trying to make it into that
top spot of the next stage. Another slow one from SSG. They'll keep the shield of Dream
bringing the Blitz back out from round number one, and are hoping to go for a top floor clear with
this in hand. Dream is on a quick one in the moment and then we'll hear him galloping away on that
top floor. It's a beautiful shield. Would you look at that thing? Oh man. Gorgeous gold accents.
Skinnergy's good today. Skinnergy's really good. I mean you gave a shout out to the A's Paragon skin
earlier on. I mean we got a the the skins team loves it. I remember back in Charlotte when we had
the boo and the teams didn't use their appropriate team banners. Afterwards the Ubisoft employee came
up to me and was like typically we don't like people booing our esport but from a marketing
standpoint that was that was true. I was like well I'll send my check for my commission
and the men. Getty leave off pick! He was the man of the hour on round number one. He
will strike first. Raid traded out. M80 is very good at being able to shove an advantage
back away whenever it appears on the side of space station. So rebuffing that number's
advantage. His dream has now found his way towards the bombsite. This round has gone
by in a hurry. 35 seconds remain, M80. Good to lead now as Aiden drops rival goes down as well,
Gavin with two kills and very quick succession, Savage and other Ashen on the board. That one was
done so quickly. Oh my goodness. That...
Are they playing in St. Catharines?
Is that the university? I will do so. I'm here. M80, I'm 2-1 by the way.
Yeah, big round from a major to win for SSG if you know they got good map control up on the top floor
But they didn't really have much to do with it Parker. They didn't bring a ram
They didn't bring a sledge or a buck they had no breaching charges
It was really just some you know secondary pistols and whatnot to try to work those floorboards and in the end
It meant that they just have to funnel their way down through those main stairs and in through the beepers anyways
And it just ended up
Resulting in them walking a bit of a crossfires and they were still in control of archives and tellers
Gavin went for a big swing there to stop the push as it was coming in the coordination late round was really good from an 80s
So helps to get them this now lead back in their hands
They had it after round one
They will have it again after round three and after a full site rotation feeling confident enough that they can ban out that
glass stop any of the shanty gins that got away from them in round two
It's not St. Catherine's it's St. Claire's they're in Windsor, Ontario. Oh my goodness
I thought I recognized that logo I mean I have to imagine it's because of the visa situation
Adrian on wildcard last-stage secured a Canadian visa far faster than he did a US visa and he was playing out of Toronto if you recall
Citizen in spoint have played out of Toronto before while they were waiting their visas
Spoint and Canadian are in Toronto for this stage and Rexon will be joining them as well
So playing in a school. I was correct. It is St. Clair St. Clair Saints
They are playing in Windsor, just an inspectionally referred to as South Detroit, so nice to have
them here and welcome to, uh, okay, Canada, and I imagine that again is because of Savage
and the visa issues faster to get a Canadian visa than it is to get a US visa.
I suspect these days that seems to be the case with a bunch of orcs.
So I'm 80 though, taking the lead here two to one.
I just feel good.
I feel vindicated.
If I can make it about me for a second here is I love to do Jesse.
I feel quite vindicated.
Ontario also hosting an NA Open Cup July 17th to 19th. Registration is open if you're
wanted to get involved with competitive Rainbow Six and you're in the area. It's the perfect
opportunity. Hopefully you won't have to play against them, 80.
That would be a disappointment.
We're out of the tournament? Yeah, we just got the Munich Major Champs here, by the way.
You guys are cool to go up against them, right?
Should be tight, should be tight.
Ashen equalizes 8 and 0 and 4. That is the number one ranked champion in ranked at the moment.
So watch out for him, but yet to really heat up here on bank now
It's gonna be a 4v4 push from space station and while they've taken the top couple of floors Parker
I don't know if I love their utility losing the sense means it's gonna be really difficult to stop this plant denial when you go for your
On goes cluster charges dream will now drop in
A razor bloom goes off in front of them razor bloom razor wire suffering through quite a bit of damage is now he
finds yet another opening towards the A-bombs site really taking his time
debuffed by that razor-glued. Again a sticky team this M80 squad has been
Jesse doesn't matter who gets the first pick neither of these teams are really
running away with that opening duel Aiden 0 and 4 is not the start that he and SSG
wants he has to be out of the match. Aiden tweeted at 3.49 a.m. last night
number one champ never give up on your dreams to which his coach
Comedians we responded please for the love of God go to bed. I
Do like to remind people the time zones
Exist so it is possible. It was a reasonable hour for him or 3 49 a.m. His time to be clear
I know what time zone he's in
You know what time zone his mother is in and her birthday because it's
Your numbers you really need to work on here
Final 35 seconds now as space station are knocking on the door of the bomb site
They are slowed for a moment by the gas canister tossed out by savage still to in pocket with 30 seconds to go
This is really good timing or m80 another will go now in this old rigmarole this dance this rhythm
Right now it's causing some problems for space station. They lose rival to Gavin, but ray trains him right back
You've still got raid
commandeering that open hatch from above waiting for the crossover towards garage will drop with a shotgun and then
Defuser wins that fight a thing of beauty from defuser is now the cavalry are called on in
They will form dream great coverage from giddy for one dream will need to put matters into his own hands
But the Chicago boy himself ashen will say not today junior m80 hops on the diffuse kid with plenty of time to go
3-1
4 m80
7 and 2 now from ashen
I highlighted how good he was back in around number one Parker going for the flank up server stairs down through the lobby hatch
Got some really important picks in that first baseman defense. They run the bomb site back
They have more success coming through from Ashen very different look. I'd say going for SSG
They don't go for the Russian through Lobby, of course
It's tough to make that one work twice so instead go for something a bit more traditional
But the toxic babes are perfect the time game is excellent on the side of M80 and even though the plant
Technically goes down it goes down at such a loss. You're in a 1v2 with the fuse shield
It's not gonna be ideal coming through from dream there
So nice little defense around coming in from M80 they play it classic
they play it by the book they'll secure this at the very least they'll try the
time
it's been a good showing from a man defending here on bank again we'd like
to tout the numbers of these maps and that that will come but I mean we're not
gonna start talking about map pick fan side sight rotation etc. let me just
We are only a couple of days in to stage one. I know that a pack is going on
Obviously, EML was going on the last two days
Quite a lot of NA action this first week
We'll get numbers eventually we'll be able to talk about it
So whether it be in North America or the other region goes look back on a
Solid city major the only you're obviously big change here has been to Joe could be and she hasn't been
And after a lot of the rounds where she's obviously being banned
so
And hard for doggie to have much of an impact here with her scarier new icon
She's gone from wholesome eyes to angry eyes, so
Oh, she makes me angry. That's for sure
Just gonna come up with a joke, but I feel like today I can be nice to you your wedding is coming up
I feel like not insulting you is important
appreciate that it's good to get some good will between us before at least on
the very opening day of the stage
for the dozens of people watching our e-sport right now so
here comes Aiden again he goes down early Parker 0 and 5 now is the primary
entry for SSG you're hoping to get a little bit more out of this guy he was
so good by far the best player for SSG back during kickoff he's actually
currently the highest rated player in the league since the season began, but with an 0-5 start here against M80.
This is not the Aiden that we're used to seeing.
Highest EPS during kickoff was Aiden. He had a ton of rounds played. He had the highest KD first during kickoff.
Second highest kills per round. Fourth highest entry rate as well.
So we're not just talking about some guy who was maybe 10-15th in the league.
We're talking top five numbers in almost every category and today you would not believe that at all 0 and 5
Having negative impact on this team currently rocking a 37 EPS
These are dreadful numbers for Aiden and unfortunately it is costing his team
He's getting shut down by the great guns on the side of M80, but I mean
Well, maybe I'm huffing a little bit of copium here
There's been a lot of really good players have been shut down from M80 over the course of the last couple years and speaking of them 80
They're gonna 4v2 with a minute to go.
They are looking in a mighty good position to push us to a 4-1 score line.
Rival desperate here comes the flashbang.
It will blind Ashing, gives an opportunity, but he loses the long-angle fight to Defuser.
Dream with one, but that's all he will get, and it's an easy close-up from M80,
who continued to play the clock, who continued to play the time game,
and walk away with success once again.
I mean, they don't really look like they're trying too, too hard here.
It just looks like things are going according to plan for M80.
Space station are putting in a performance
that they will probably want to forget,
at least on this first half, Jesse.
They have, I mean, I will say,
they've been doing pretty okay
from an opening duals perspective.
Very similar to what we saw out of our first series of the day.
SSG has three opening picks through five rounds.
The problem is not getting kill number one.
The problem is everything after that.
And again, one of the times they're not bonafide trades,
but MAD is refragging within 30 seconds of most of these engagements, but you gain very little ground when it comes to numbers.
Yeah, obviously getting the first pick means that there's utility that might not be available for the next step,
but that really hasn't hampered this MAD team.
Losing Gunner in both of his engagements, playing a passive gadget, whether it be on the bandit or the thorn,
he's not the guy who dies with a lot in pocket, so you're losing a great player,
but you're not harming the team of M80 more than that so space station try as they might this has been a tough
Go of them a 4-2 scoreline still within their grasps, but frankly
They haven't looked very good in the last couple rounds here
So they are going to need to be better than they've been I would say up to this point if they want to salvage a second round
Feels like I miss a muslin right you want to see them get that fourth you split the very least
But we'll see how this defense goes from M80.
Last time SSG focused a lot on clearing that top floor, but they didn't have the ram.
They didn't have tools to actually use that top floor pressure.
This time, Giddy hops on that operator and SSG, if they can take top floor again,
should be able to do a little bit more with it.
At the same time, Aiden has worked his way solo in through Garage.
There's nobody currently down here for him to find on the scanner,
but Gavin's playing those main stairs on the first floor.
There are players who can get a bit aggressive at some points.
Good utility here from the Thorn. It's gonna alert M80 if Aiden starts to walk up these stairs.
Open to kickstart some offense for himself and for his team. Kills have not been a hard thing to come
by for Space Station as you look in the bottom right corner of your screen. They've still been
landing quite a bit of blows here. 14 kills. I guess across five concluded rounds. Almost averaging
three kills around. Isn't terrible. That's certainly not blown out territory. They will suffer through
an early opening death Gavin a minute and 15 seconds off the clock will start the killing Aiden hoping for some follow-up
But he can't do anything about it. He gives this position away as well
Hoping to maybe draw out one of these players
But nobody is giving him the attention that he craves so off he goes to lurk through the basement that will buy some time for him 80
Gavin genuinely just so good. His stats were almost identical to Aiden's actually and kickoff Aiden had a slightly higher EPS
but they were neck and neck for one and two here in the season.
Completely different games, though, for the start of stage one.
They've got this control, and as I say, Giddy can start to use some of that to his advantage,
but the numbers keep going down.
0 and 6 now, as Ashen reminds Aiden,
and we're in a 5v3 for the final round of the half.
The dog's off the leash, Jesse.
Aiden will now come for the ankles,
or just about anybody on the space station who crosses his path.
and I mean Ashen is 8 and 2 at this point in time.
It's just a couple kills more than the remaining three players on Space Station have to their names.
SSG losing their auxiliary players of rival and now Aiden is, I guess, he's moved to an auxiliary position
because of his lack of fragging prowess. Gunner taking down Dream.
A flawless round right now shaping up, but Giddy says not quite. It'll all come down to raid.
In a 1v4, I said they had to be better.
This is one of the more dominant rounds for M80, so they did not heed that call.
Gavin goes down and would kill through a wall from Raid.
He went fishing for that.
Again, will land something not too bad, but he's got his work cut out for him.
Diffuse kit, not within reach.
Not especially with M80, staring their sights down in this angle, and Ashen will get killed
number nine.
Talks in chat and then puts the exclamation point on that round, 5-1 for M80 as we see
with the desk.
ask to say about this game.
Leo, when I asked you what stood out to you so far throughout this game,
SSG on the attack, it sounds like you're just not seeing the map control
that you need to see if they're going to find success.
Yeah, the realistic thing is that they're super slow and that's fine
if you've got the map control to back it, you know?
If you've got everything that you need at the last minute, it's good.
But look at this, it's round one.
They're attacking basement. You can see all of the control they have.
They only have Volt, Volt and Levator.
And so if you look at the Fusur, he's been able to flank up the main stairs
and go down the elevator hatch and surprise all of them.
And not even that.
I think they had Volt control? Where's Ashen?
He's dropped from Volt's hatch as well.
And you look at round three, they're attacking open space.
What control do they have?
Beepers.
That's the three players are here in this corridor.
And so they haven't even cleared tellers.
So Azamid's just having a field of day.
You know, they just get aggressive, gets a dull kill here,
and with the intense fragrance, the entire team is crumbling.
It is a huge problem for these guys.
What's the main player who made space station good in kickoff?
Yeah, and there's something we think a touch up on, it's been Aiden.
Aiden was by far their carry throughout the entire series during kickoff.
I mean, he was the number one rated player.
And this was something that we talked about going into this match
when we were doing all of our prep, is Aiden gonna have that same level of consistency.
And that's something that we know as a player.
It is very hard to constantly replicate that same level of play,
that same level of success and clearly what we're seeing so far in the series just even in the half
Aiden has not contributed to what we've seen in the previous stage and we talk about that control
which is kind of mind-numbing to me because I don't know how much of the NAL even really watched last stage
but the fact is what SSG did really well is they took map control and they forced the opponent's hand
into their crossfires into their line of sight where then they could pick a part of defense
They could use these at mid to late round executes, use those shield operators to get control, and we just aren't seeing that.
Yeah, the fundamentals are not there, and when you were relying on one guy to carry you, the best rated player on kickoff, Aiden, and use what, 0 and 6 right now?
It's definitely not great. It cannot be your single win condition.
Well, and the problem was, they were relying on that so far, like through kickoff, and that much is, you know, clearly unblended.
The number one rated player out of every single person came from a team that did not even make the top four.
Yeah, I mean, 144 to 87 deaths.
I mean, that really speaks into existence,
just how much Aiden really contributed
to that frag department and was getting killed.
And honestly, he contributed to his teams,
his success to his team, being able to set him up.
But what is the disconnect here?
Why is he not being able to be set up on a map like bank?
Yes, it is bigger.
Yes, you have to cover more ground.
But what's the big question?
The big question is the operator bands.
Is Space Station gonna throw something new
at the world?
Not really.
They're banning Hibana.
They're banning a classic bands, classic situation.
Is it enough for them to come back?
I'm really not sure.
Down 5-1, definitely a long road ahead
if they want to bring this one back.
Guys?
I think long road is the correct one of it here.
You know, you've got to keep walking.
You stop, the game will pass you by.
I think there's a very large portion of this audience
just get into the game.
They've already passed by SSG,
just by what Aiden typed in chat a few times ago,
which was where a second half team.
I don't know if the numbers back that one up,
I mean, again, you got your Starfrager, the best-rated player in the NAL kickoff, just
a mere month and a half ago, dropping zero kills for your first game.
That is terrible by any stretch of the imagination.
Everybody's gonna get the gifts, everybody's gonna get those first-game jitters, and Aiden
is still an inexperienced player when compared to a lot of the people in this lobby, so you've
gotta give him a little bit of grace here, but if he doesn't start to pick it up, I mean,
SSG is not going to be able to beat a team like M80 with their chest player going 0 and 6.
I mean, listen, there is some facts to what Aiden is saying for SSG.
They can be a bit of a second half team. Last stage in kickoff.
SSG had the highest defense win rate of any team, at least when you factor in the major,
and some of those stats going down for the teams who did attend.
62% defense win rate throughout kickoff.
So SSG are definitely a better defense team than they are on the attack.
But you're right. I mean, Aiden's going to need to find some success here.
He is one of the most productive people you'll ever meet, but he needs to be able to find those frags,
turn that productivity into some value for space station,
and starting here on the soloist, you'll have an opportunity to get aggressive,
and Rival as well, struggling in the first half, could get aggro too.
Oh!
I was wondering if he was gonna get a touch distracted there. He takes care of Gunner.
Nice early pick by Rival as he's on Amarut trying to go for a surprise play does not work.
Raid will take down Savage. So Raiden rivals with two. Oh my goodness, what was happening there to Fuser?
Aiden was sitting right next to you and you didn't even see him.
Oh well, I mean it's a bad day for Aiden. It's a really bad rotten no good day on his side of things.
At least two other players on his team managed to find some kills here in the first round of the second half.
Yeah, it not looking to where his team had just got the frags so a little bit lost there on the bottom floor
But you're right like it's fine
SST now with the man count advantage because they banned those long-range hard breach the position from action
It's not that effective
They're not full like you knew from lobby in terms of getting that elevator wall open forces a bit of a pivot for m80 now
It won't man disadvantage. They look towards stock. They look towards square. Nobody holding close on these windows
They can jump in whatever they want to
This is a really good cross from Rival, who manages to do some damage, but has allowed
that control to be wrestled away by M.A.D., down goes Gavin, Rival traded out, that is
a frustrating one for Space Station, I am certain.
Still got Kegi Tildjo on the side of SSG, and frankly this is a very winnable round
for them with 35 seconds left to go.
Yeah, the players who have been fragging in the first half are all still up for SSG,
so if you're ever going to have a 3VX, this is the players that you want to be in it,
Ashton and Diffuser playing together over towards stalk, Ashton still in the room, but Diffuser's dragging.
Down they go, M80 now outnumbered 2 to 1.
Diffuser was allowed to walk in, picked up a kill, but this is gonna be quite the task ahead of him.
SSG sitting ever so patiently. Diffuser also not with control of his name take.
He will need to retrieve it, and he doesn't have a lot of time. I don't... there's no way, right?
Right!
right dream the final kill space station will pick up their second round and
start off the second half pretty strongly maybe even wasn't so wrong Jesse
after all yeah perhaps we're are starting to see SSG come alive I will say
that was probably the best round that we've seen from doke be players so far
I would say throughout the NAL today we saw her a little bit getting value on
cafe but that round those final couple of moments every player was without a
phone because they had already been blown up by doke be so you're seeing that
value from Ashen, even while he was sitting on the roof. In the end, I think that early
man of damage was a little bit too much. Again, Aiden a little bit lost on that fight versus
Defuser, but it's okay. Defuser ends up winning the fight. He's got teammates around him to
try to get those kills back. And even though this pick from Rival was kind of tough, like
first you let them jump in the window and then you lose the swing on view, it's a tough
spot to be in. The mental fortitude was good and towards that late round, SSG did a good
job holding on they went top floor first so now they could go down to basement
which is even stronger say we say it was right we're gonna say maybe 80 years
team better than us I think that's how landish one round in they could still
lose this time too but no I've seen looks good that's fine
I've said this a couple times and I hear lax say it all the time on the desk you
know it sounds cheesy but come back always just starts with one round and it
True an SSG's got that one round. So, you know, if we extrapolate that they'll win every round for the remainder of the stage
And be the best team in North America, and I will take no
They'll take no guff
from anybody there
I'm sure your numbers back that up to listen all I ask that you use statistics properly and this is
So I'm good. Yeah, you're good
I'm no mathologist like you, but I've been studying trying to match your energy here
off the plate, but at least in open area and it results in a frag. The fuser finds Raid off the back
of his Monty and this roam game from SSG is starting to shake a bit. That was a tricky one. I mean,
I understand what you want to do and teams holding open areas is not uncommon by any stretch of
the imagination, but I am very, very happy with how M80 is cutting through this roam clear. This
is the thing of beauty to watch. They've also pushed off that elevator control and now SSG will
have to consolidate themselves down in the bomb site. Aiden will gamble his own seven life on the
desperation kills now rivals been put in the same grave that the other two
teammates have been dropped in moments ago. Down goes Aiden at the hands of Ash and
Dream the only one on the board. They'll be hunted by the death mark. All the
flames will go towards the stairs to either deal damage or waste some time
from M80. Dream City at seven and six. Usually it's not a good time when your
support ops are carrying the weight of Gideon Dream. I've been on the top of the
the scoreboard for space station.
He is not long for this earth and.
Well, I just as I predicted,
M80 goes back to winning.
I definitely never said anything about
space station winning the rest of the series
and it's match point for M80.
On all fronts, M80 just looked like a well oiled machine.
Despite the roster move,
this team is looking on fire up against space station gaming.
They will have four opportunities to close this game
and they'll prompt attack timeout from SSG,
chance to talk to their coach, Kama. Kama was the assistant coach on this roster back during
kickoff, but after losing DMC, they promoted him up to primary coach, and this will be his first
stage as the primary coach of a T1 team. He's got his work cut out for him to turn this match
around with just pure domination on the side of M80, and a couple different players still on SSG
yet to really get active. Aiden, of course, the main one, 0-8 I believe now, but Rival as well
They all struggle throughout this game. They have to get all five players on board.
Yeah, right now it's been a 4v5 every single round.
Aiden has a lot of fans, and Byall Measures is an incredibly talented player.
I don't need to go back over the stats from kickoff, but just in case anybody didn't hear it,
number one rating, number one on KDR, number two on entry, just all of these numbers so good.
I'd actually have to pull up the real numbers. Let me go through it again. Aiden.
Highest EPS during kickoff, highest KD during kickoff, second highest kill per round during kickoff,
fourth highest entry stats during kickoff.
It's not a fluke, it's not like a guy had a couple good rounds and won a couple categories.
He was so dominant and was a huge part of why Space Station was the incantation.
Ultimately failed it but still incantation for a Salt Lake City major spot.
For him to go 0 and 8, this very well could be, I don't have these numbers at hand so you might guess,
This could very well be Aiden's worst performance in the NAL since making his day two.
I mean, granted, it's good to get this out of your way here on day one than to get it in the later matches where the stakes are going to be higher.
The thing is that Aiden just needs to bounce back and make sure that he's as confident as can be for tomorrow's matches.
Can I let this get to you? If he can salvage a couple kills before this game is over and the end of this game might be coming in a hurry, get for Aiden.
But I think the big thing is just a mental reset. You've got good leadership on the side of space station.
I'm sure they'll be fine, but it is a disappointing day for them and Aiden in particular.
This is Parker. I think for every young player, there comes a time where you realize, like, okay,
sometimes right before a big game, maybe I need to get my beauty sleep.
Maybe I need to be well rested. Maybe I don't need to be up until 4 in the morning grinding ranked.
And he got number one champ. I- nobody can take that away from him, but if you can have
number one champ or a kill against M80, I think right now he kind of prefer the second.
Here comes the brush clean to the blitz.
Savage will force out Rival,
and it is immediately cleaned up.
Gavin, this is so clean from anything.
We get to see a donkabee and look
at how methodical this is.
50 seconds off the clock.
You have blue control, you have open control,
you got first floor control,
you have shoved SSG into a box.
They do have one on flank.
So there is a player standing over near open area.
They've got a good read on Ashen as well.
So Dream could get active on that front,
as Ashen will now reposition.
So I mean, not bad for space station with their coverage here on this map, but frankly, Jesse.
Yeah, they just need to make sure they don't get caught out.
Giddy spotted on the Rome diffuser, had that flank watch drone sitting over by Electrical.
Now you can play a bit smarter.
If you're the nook, you'll have Dream focused on Ashen.
That leaves four players on M80 to deal with Aiden and Raid.
Raiden now taking a bit of damage as Dream gets on the board.
So the Wallace round will be at hand for M80.
He gets punished by Gunner.
Aiden, 0-8, raid 5-8, searching for very important kills.
Or this one's as good as gone for Aiden.
The goal?
Don't go on empty handed.
The 0-9 score line is not what you want to see.
He gets one, so I guess that's a win in the books for Space Station.
But I may have a minute with three players still to go,
and they just need to find Aiden.
Jesse, I'm fearing this one might be Curtains.
So much time to play with, I see one on the hatch, goes for the fight, here comes the plant, he got goyos, oooh, through the smoke!
No way, right? No way, right?
He has an opportunity, Diffuse kit is stocked, so Savage wisely falling off of the plant, Aiden's still hunkered down over by Red doing some serious damage.
This is winnable, if Diffuser drops that hatch and takes a bad gunfight, Aiden could very easily get this.
the game. My goodness far too
close for comfort. But
ultimately it is an M 80 beat
down and what a debut for
Savage in the N a league.
Windsor, Ontario buff on the
side of M 80 as they dominate
space station 72. They may have
missed Salt Lake City, but
Parker there right back in the
first time playing in this season.
But we'll go to the desk to see them break down this match
up before we continue our day.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
M80 make it look easy. So far, the roster change seems to be working out. So we've got
the man himself standing by Savage. Welcome to North America. You're here and you've
already made your impact. Tell me what has your experience been like so far in NA?
Um, it's been okay, you know, uh, I mean, stage wise is a new experience.
So it's fun.
Uh, maybe it was expecting a little bit more.
Wow.
I don't know.
Maybe, but now it's been fun.
Like, uh, the guys are like, really welcoming, uh, a lot of difference, the, the culture
around N.A.
Love typing in the shot.
I'm not used to, but yeah, it's fun.
You got to get used to it now.
Yeah, I got to.
You just meet them in the game, so I don't have to.
Savage, a long time no see, you cannot escape me.
I will find you, even in a new region.
Listen, I've seen you bully players with your shield for two years in EML.
You arrive in your first game on Bank, and you arrive on Attack, and I see you play Blackbird,
I see you play Mountain, I see you bully players with your shield.
Is it going to be one of your main strengths that you're going to bring to a mate if you
throughout the season because I can already see it coming to happen.
Yeah, I mean I think there's something to struggle about season
because Ashen was playing most of the shields
and that takes off a lot of his dragon power, right?
So like with me being able to take that position,
I'm like playing it decently,
like it allows him to play other roles that maybe he's more comfortable on.
So I think that's like definitely a big plus.
I also hope I can obviously, I would murder that, but I hope it's going to be helpful like me so far,
like if a team is not running a Monty on Bank against me, I don't know, like there's a lack of respect on that.
And you just flexed by the way, because I think you played the three shields, you played with Dagrid and Montaigne for the three rounds.
Sure.
And just a quick one on this, you were used to playing with a lot of players that had incredible firepower and micromanaging them and idealing them in a good way.
You're now in a similar situation. You have some of the best firepower in NA. Is that something that you were looking forward to when you joined this roster?
Yeah, I knew this was an option. I knew this would be the team to take if they offered me the spot because the firepower on this team,
As well, just in-game IQ is just insane, right?
They call it a super, super talent team.
I'm really glad to be able to play with such players.
The things that I watch daily on screens from all of them
is insane.
So yeah, I'm just really grateful to be given the opportunity
to play alongside such great players again,
from Secret to this team.
I'm really lucky, I guess, to be in IGL
and be of this players as my players.
Absolutely.
Well, Savit, I want to congratulate you on your match.
I mean, a 7-2.
I mean, it's a phenomenal start.
Obviously, your iteration coming into the NA,
you said it was hoping for a little sum, harder.
I expect some down the road.
But something I do want to talk about that we did talk about
going into this match, I am a little critical of my theory
of you coming onto this, not you as your own self.
I think you are a tremendous ideal.
You've obviously made great strides,
winning EWC second runner up at the most recent SI.
I kind of want to pick your brain.
You know, you've obviously watched
many different iterations of the M80 roster
and how they make changes.
They aren't a long lasting team or structure, so to say.
They make changes pretty drastically.
If things don't work out,
do you feel that puts a lot of pressure on you
filling a role of hot and cold where again,
when you look at the roster that you're under now,
they found their most success with hot and cold.
So again, do you feel that there's a lot of pressure
on you to replicate that success?
If not replicate that success, push it even further and make this team better than what they were with Han-Kol.
Um, that's a good question. I mean, I would say so myself because like I'm very confident in my abilities, right?
So now I wouldn't join a team and be worried about what some other player did.
Like if they thought the best thing was to drop him and to get me as a player, then they believe that I'm an upgrade for him, right?
So I don't exactly see it that way.
But obviously, I think with the players that we have, there is expectations and I think that's a good thing.
You can't just live in a very world where you think you don't have to show results and you don't have to play well.
That's just how it is. We're competitors and that's what we like to do anyways.
We want the pressure, we want to show people that we are these players that people expect us to be.
So I think more than anything, it's a privilege in a way.
Yeah, absolutely love the response. Oh, yeah, Savage. Thank you so much for your responses tonight
And I think we'll be talking quite a bit throughout the stage. So we look forward to that. Congrats on the way
Thank you guys so much. See you guys around have a good one
Well, what a win for M80 and you can hear there from Savage
I mean that was a well thought out response to your question of yes, of course, there's that pressure
But he's confident in himself to perform at this level to get the job
Yeah, absolutely
And I think just even to the questions of what he brings to the table that it was answering from Leo and just what he answered
I mean you can clearly see the confidence within him again with so little in terms of his history when we compared him to hot cold
Clearly he has the rights and the minds and the workings to be one of the best players in the game
One of the best IGLs to keep the consistency and keep that exact same tenacity that he shows and you can see the results directly
Who was the best rated player in this match?
He was Ashen and who used to play the shields before it was Ashen so by playing the shields savage now freeze
He's actually up beyond his favorite role, and he can do exactly what he was doing on secret.
Have four players that have incredible firepower at his disposal,
and abuse them as much as he wants, as the master mind that he is.
I think that is something also to take note of, is obviously realizing your player's strengths already coming into the team.
Understanding, yes, Ashen can play the shields, but why put him on him if Savage can take that role,
take on that burden, take on that responsibility, and put Ashen in a more comfortable role,
where naturally that's where Ashton is always going to excel,
is getting those opening kills, getting into your face,
allowed to get aggressive,
and really just relieving any bit of weight
that he had on his back when he was on that SSG roster.
Well, on the flip side, right, that SSG roster,
we saw some struggles, particularly from Aiden.
This was something that Jesse brought up
on the cast a couple of times.
Aiden tweeted, last night at four in the morning,
or just about his time,
that he is now the number one ranked champ.
Congratulations to him and all,
But the performance today may be indicated a little lack of sleep.
I will say this, there is nothing worse for a pro player to not find success or to be dropping a donut the majority of the game.
Thankfully, he did end up getting, what, three kills at the very end.
Sure, it didn't contribute to the win by any means, but fact of the matter is he still has the right attitude.
He's still cracking jokes, and I think there is something to take note in that aspect.
And most importantly, we're all having fun about this, but let's just remember Aiden's still a really young player.
He just impressed everyone at kickoff, and most importantly, yes, he was grinding ranked too late.
That's often a mistake that rookie players can't do, he's actually playing too much when it's your dream and you really want to be the best player.
But it shows commitment. Yes, he's the number one champion. He was grinding ranked because he wants to be at his tibiditop, he wants to be the best performer possible.
And yes, it was a mistake, but at the same time, props to him because he's still grinding this game and clearly he's passionate.
Yeah, clearly he is, and we knew this M80 matchup would not be easy for SSG by any means.
I mean, I saw it with them stomping, Cloud, not me.
Close.
Not your best argument.
Well, maybe they could brush that off heading down the line, but right now it was M80 who obviously grabbed the headlines in the break.
But at the Salt Lake City Major, it was Wildcard grabbing the headlines with the Hot and Cold Revenge Tour.
They now go up against well the team that hot and cold is currently on with hundred thieves
We'll start with wild card though Leo because this team has always been an
International force and despite not having their IGL who they'd been practicing with all kickoff
They still had a pretty good performance. That's all I say
Somehow they always come alive at land it's just beautiful to see because I was part of a team that was the opposite
You know, it's horrible this early up until that point
Yeah, exactly.
From an NAL standpoint.
But from a standpoint of a player that used to qualify to every event and then, you know,
what happened.
I can relate.
Yeah.
I just love to see a roster that can actually outperform and play so much better when they're
at LAN.
But like you said, it is a problem and it is a worrying problem in an NAL that has first
and foremost, you know, young teams like Forthun or Outlast or even Five Fears, like players
that are teams that were not supposed to do so great, that are actually able to upset
big teams and then big teams that have heavily invested in the rosters and are
looking more competitive than ever teams like this that struggle online I'm
just afraid for them yeah it's definitely gonna make wild card in a
worse-for-wear situation here because when we look at every single group stage
since them coming into this and this with these rosters they haven't really
looked that impressive regionally it's almost I don't want to put them on the
same level but just like a cross reference think of feria for example
They were never good within their own region.
Obviously, they would squeak into play-out.
Inconsistent is the word.
Once they would get to international event,
they absolutely dominated.
And that's the exact same thing with Wildcard.
But we're just getting to a point now where something has to give.
And it's either they're going to continue to squeak by, make playoffs,
then continue to their major runs,
or they're going to miss out on an event because they can't squeak by.
And they're going to make a roster change.
Because as we know, during SI, this might be some insider,
There were talks of them making a big roster change after SI.
That didn't come true.
They did end up sticking together.
But I can't imagine if they miss out on a big event,
such as EWC, with a lackluster performance
in a domestic sense, I can't imagine a world
where they sit there and think, OK,
let's give it another try.
I think a change will be made.
Well, one of the three rosters that did make a change coming
into the stage was 100 Thieves.
And the big change, the big pickup, was Hot and Cold.
That revenge tour that you had on Wildcard at the major,
that now shifts to this 100 Thieves banner,
and what they have now added
with the addition of Kason as well,
there's a lot of potential here.
And Vivas, because you said the most important pickup
was what they called, and I find that debatable.
In a sense that I do think that is one of the most
accomplished ideal in the world,
but Kason might just be the next big thing.
And Vivas, he's the mastermind behind the success
of so many teams, and he maybe brings a depth
that they didn't have.
And I'm just thinking of Jason and here's a clip of him as a streamer, as a huge content creator,
90k followers on Twitch and very impressive with like a mechanical skill that we recognize from
a console player that's switched to PC.
Backbox players man, I'm telling you. Yeah, but then naturally.
You said it to me before, right? It feels like a stomp in Oliver again.
Does he have that potential to really come alive from the ranked games
into, you know, the top level of an A?
listen and it's and it's hard not to believe that he is going to deliver on
that front because every single time we've heard about these up and comers
whether it was boy back in the day whether it was below whether it was
stomping whether it was new words whether it was aiden everyone so far has
been delivering on that front so I have no doubt in my mind that case on is
coming into this roster especially with the change that they made of like
you're saying getting Viva's as their coach bringing in and hot cold as an
ideal there is far more structure for him to be able to come into and develop
and grow as a player where if he joined this team prior, if he was turning 18 before this
roster got put together 100 thieves announcement, then maybe he wouldn't find that success.
But I think this is a perfect time and a perfect scenario for him to come in and really showcase
and have the structure behind him and a leader behind him to help him improve and develop
as a player.
Right.
It's a perfect kind of situation where this all could fall into place really nicely.
You have a leader in hot and cold.
You have a new young star on the newest organization that our speaker former players for hot and
to automatically gel with outside of Gomez kind of being that outlier. I think there's there's a lot
of success with this big change for 100 feet. And I like Vivas. I will say this again. I think
Vivas will bring a lot of this to that roster, Evan from the sidelines and where and who better to
learn under than Vivas, then hot and cold as that new player, right? Skye's the limit here. I think
for this roster, but as we said, not the results they wanted in kickoff. That's where they're
going to have to improve something. Let's take a look at the map and see actually where we're
We're going to end up going here to see exactly if 100 D you can start to get improving from the jump
Lacks they go to bank. What do you make of it?
either cash and checks or stealing checks at this point and for wild cards again
I I got to see something from them. This is a perfect time to pounce on a team
That's brand new to really showcase obviously they didn't get to have Aiden throughout their series in SLC
He is going to be I mean Adrian is going to be brought back
However, hot cold was playing with them
So I'm sure he's gonna have a little bit of counter strat counter play given the fact he played with him
However on the side for a hundred thieves it is a very big map and trying to make a new team work filling in case on
Filling in Gomez into the roles of what he wants to I could see some problems arise there
I I do see some positives though for a hundred thieves. Absolutely. And the positives is
Exactly the same story as for M.A.T. Houghton called John Sturroster, right?
So he's gonna give more space to spirits who was the IGL before so spirit is gonna be able to play his main role
Which is a shields play which is huge on bank and now he can solely focus on that yes
And what I'm cold on the IGL in well
I assume Parker and Jesse are tired of talking about hot and cold at this point considering how much he was present at the major
But now with case on in the mix Parker excited to hear your thoughts as we get into this one
not tired of talking about people who deserve to be talked about and if you
hot and cold is definitely on that list case on also is very much on that list
we got to spend a lot of time talking about hot and colds former organization
of m80 in the matchup that you know fought that came before this but we're
gonna go back to the same map and we're gonna get to see a guy who used to play
on m80 but obviously a very different look this is the match of the day for me
What does this new look of 100 thieves do in their maiden voyage?
Does Wildcard once again, playing with Adrian,
are they able to prove they are consistently a top four team domestically?
What are your expectations here for a third match of the day?
Honestly, this is a cop-out answer, but I'm going to say no expectations coming into this.
I'm giving 100 thieves a blank slate.
You know, you go back to kickoff before they had hot and cold, before they had case on.
That team really wasn't built, I think, in the way that Hunter Thieves fans were hoping for.
It didn't really have the juice that people were wanting to see out of this team.
Now you throw in a world-class IGL alongside an 18-year-old kid
who is just dipping his toes into tier one for the first time.
And you've got it. What a new organization like Hunter Thieves wants to be starting with, right?
You've got that foundation that I think they were hoping to have back during kickoff.
off, now it feels like the real deal. I'm a big fan of Wildcard Parker, I think this
team is really good, back during the Salt Lake City Major, the only teams they lost
to were FaZe Clan, the World Champs, and DarkZero, the eventual Major Champs. So this is a
team who really only struggle against the best of the best, 100 Thieves, it's tough
to say if they'll be at that level as of now, as of yet, but the potential is seriously
deep on that squad.
I'm assuming Adrian got his US visa, as he seems to be in the same room as all of them.
Les Wildcard also played out of Canada.
I know Adrian was playing out of Canada for the kickoff here.
And the idea is, are playing out of Los Angeles at the 100 Thieves compound.
That fun fact, when we worked for a particular TO that was based out of Culver City,
we would drive past the 100 Thieves compound every single day.
So they got to see it, and in all of its glory,
it's nice that these teams will be playing in person.
They've got their coaching staff nearby.
They'll be able to do team bonding.
It will obviously help these squads.
For Wildcard, I always think a ton of improvement
is really there, right?
They're already a good team.
They've already consistently been one of North America's
best, even with Hot and Pain subbing him for Adrian.
They were able to make top eight at the Salt Lake City Major,
which, frankly, it was quite surprising.
They weren't the only team with a sub to make top eight.
Chris and Miner have come before with a sub of Dillbury.
And they were guards, rather, playing on that team.
but 100 thieves had a really miserable showing in kickoff.
They made two moves,
one of which was a bit more surprised than the other
that was Pamba getting shuffled off of the team,
Yaga getting shuffled off,
Yaga finding new life with DK over in EML.
Pamba will be playing in that Cloud9 matchup later today
and bringing in Hot and Cold,
which I mean, when Hot is available,
you scoop him up right away,
hoping that the rest of 100 thieves,
spirits in particular will be able to play better
with a veteran presence like Hot and on the roster.
Bottom floor is going to be our site and Adrian still playing for Wildcard now, of course, back on the team.
Inside Garage will be a bit of a solo player as the rest of the team starts to take these top couple of floors.
Not a very fast map clear, coming through early from Wildcard, taking their time and showing their respect to the players on 100Bs.
Gomez inside of Archives protected from those drones thanks to his mausoleum pest.
It's going to be really tough to get eyes on him, but through the other doorway, they can start to clear the space.
And it's a nitro from spirit that's that's less going
I mean they said what hot and on the team would do for spiker on wildcard during Salt Lake City
How will that impact spirits spirits and on cold probably two of the best shield players in North America?
I don't think there is a big argument there for either of that obviously both them with a lot of veteran presence and leadership
Gomez has some leadership qualities too
I think all of that will be really good for K-Son as he makes his debut at a tier one level
He obviously brings a huge spotlight on him the desk talked about it for quite a bit of time
So we don't need to delve into it right now
But he's certainly gonna be somebody to watch he comes from that same console click that we saw raid come from that
Aiden came from you're really hoping that K-Son has a better game today on this map and we saw Aiden muster here
Under Thieves with the numbers to manage will have an even greater advantage as K-San gets his very first kill against Adrian
Hotten out duels baby shark and suddenly it's two remaining on wildcard against everybody on the Thieves
They'll lose hot and cold to a hatch peak after that last gas canister goes off him with 30 seconds left
Spiker and Kansan they're gonna have to make a lot of lemonade of these lemons that have been dropped on their lap
And not enough time to case on an opportunity.
Does get pride by Kanzin.
It's tough up here in tier one, but he's done more than enough, Parker.
He's wasted so much time instead of Gerber.
Now they can just play behind their utility and go and talk from Gomez.
Can I say that?
There's actually not a lot of length in that.
There's a world that goes down.
And that might just be the case.
Adam looking for the dead drop.
Kanzin, great coverage.
Biker trusting him, both of them firing away as they back up.
Excuse me?
the back of 100 Thieves and
Wildcard steals round one.
Florida's finest comes alive in
the very first round from Wildcard.
What a play from Kansan again.
Good start from 100 thieves felt
like they had that round on
lockdown, but you can never
count out Kansan in those
low time situations.
Recognizing again that there just
wasn't that planktonile available for 100 beads.
They killed Hot and Cold early.
That's this kill on the hatch right here.
They don't exactly find it,
but eventually Hot and Cold does die.
This is the eventual spring from Spiker,
a 2v5 from some of the most veteran players on Wildcard.
Comes alive with us classic server plants.
And I mean, it is just beautiful watching Cams and Sing.
It's like you go, it's going fun.
It's like you go.
And we're alive in the NAL.
He's, he's, he's eaten up, he's eaten up.
I just want to let you know by the way,
that Chapp, and by virtue of him
coming straight from this,
he's gonna hear what I'm about to say.
Mint has always called in Kason,
but everybody else seems to call him Kason.
Right, that's what you call him, Kason?
Yep, yeah, Kason.
Literally first time I said Kason,
I get a DM from Mint that says,
What is case on it was coming?
All right, how do you pronounce it case in case on
Your pronunciation guide here. What does it say in your notes and when is his mother's birthday?
We'll work on those stats
Case in the decent start I think down inside of servers, you know, he has a good bit of value from that one frag and wasting the time
I don't blame him for getting smoked by Kansan in the midst of that, but no follow-up unfortunately from his teammates
It's only good enough for one plenty of time still to get some rounds on the board and to grow this kill count
He's playing the stock position just outside here and as he gets droned by his arch rival Kansan
I'll approach it. You'll have a difficult time holding down this position against the snake
I think we'll be keeping an eye on, of course, Kansan, almost single-handedly winning that previous round to give Wildcard a thriller.
And I mean, we expected this to be a close match-up. I think the community poll was 54 to 46%, and you also agree with us.
As they're casing the rescue, finds the Blackbeard, he's in the tough spot here to knock the
shield away, but it's a team effort as Bay as the window, and down goes the newest member
of 100 Thieves.
Still, the Thieves with an advantage for the time being half the round to go.
Alright, good count now for 100 Thieves.
The last round started strong for them as well, Parker, so Wildcard will slow this down
and try to hunt for another miracle.
They do not have cans in alive to get another 4k for them.
So somebody else will have to bear the load
in order to make this round happen for them.
Very straight out of the moment.
Players outside of stock,
you've got the Doca beef lane by Adrian,
just outside the window.
Still four of those logic bombs that he can try to use
to put pressure on these site players.
Everybody who's still remaining with their phones
and even still works,
casing through the grave can start to watch these cans.
How does Wildcard do it?
Excellent lockdown, but there's Gomez with the nitro cell.
He's picked apart hot and will need to be the savior.
Bay shuts him down.
Goodness gracious, that happens again.
Wildcard start off 2-0.
What a testament, I think it is, Parker,
to how consistently Wildcard are taking these
man-disadvantaged plant positions
and are making them work over and over again.
Wildcard will do this time and time again
where they're just gonna slow the round down
to a snail's pace.
It's okay that they lost some of their tools in the early round because they're so good at adapting and making sure that the few numbers they have are holding the right angles, are in the exact right spots.
They're not rushing in for a plant after they lose a couple of bodies. They're happy in the 3v4 because they know if we can start threatening a plant down just inside a CEO, then all of a sudden the movements will come from 100 thieves.
If we're ready for them, if we're watching, that is going to favor us.
Spiker dies going for that plant in round number two Parker
They don't quite get it down like did in the first round
But it doesn't matter because the gunplay is so good from Bay Adrienne even spiker getting one himself
They're ready for the movements being pulled out and forced out by hundred thieves
This has been really really good recovery from wildcard even if the early game isn't going their way I've been loving these exeges
Imagine what this damage, the damage this team could have done if they were fighting
with their proper five at the event.
I mean, again, Han cold was a pretty good substitute for Adrian.
It did put Spiker on the maybe more comfortable roles that he was used to, but top eight being
your ceiling with a sub.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's quite unlikely that a sub joining a team will allow you to
be better than your official squad.
But I think the only real time that I can think back to the profound impact that a sub had
was when Kanto subbed for Penta, if you recall, back during the Atlantic City Major where
they finished second two-team liquid after Shate had dropped off of that team and then
Kanto ended up becoming a permanent addition and that's when G2 looked, that's when they
were ultimately picked up by G2 and went on that reign of terror that they had.
But I mean, again, Adrian fits this team like a glove, savage fitting that MAD team through
game like a glove as well and because of that it's good to see teams back to the potential that they have.
Adrian obviously is not going to huge part of these two rounds for Wildcard but just being able to play with your five gives you a different level of confidence and I think that's Wildcard.
Well, Kirk showed that off clear as day.
I know a team definitely felt like they could have shown a bit more in those quarterfinals and they had their full five man stack.
stacked out that they weren't appreciative of hot and cold and the effort that he put in, but
he signed with 100 Bs before the Wild Cards run was even over, signed with them mid tournament
subbing in for Wild Cards, so he knew it was never a long-term home for himself. Now he's
about the opportunity to try to use some of those insights and tactics against them here on Wild
Cards. Their third defense, gonna be tried on open area. Not much of a top floor hold, I guess
Adam, Kason, and Spirits still trying to lock this down while Cardinal engaging with it so far.
It might just try to hold from the square windows up top and then jump in these
sight windows and walk into janitor, but the drone will still make it awkward.
Biding their time, happy to go slow.
There's a vault in from Spiker as he stares down the bomb chassis and hot pursuit of hot and cold.
Oh my goodness, teammates mere weeks ago, now enemies inside the server.
Kason taking down Spiker, you'll find his second kill.
He's loving this Scorpium. It was a funny guy in hand for the highlight clamp. He's finished off by Bay 94
The wild card will have a 3v3 hard to believe that they're up 2-0 at the moment Jesse and yet
This is the closest round for wild card with only a minute to go
Yeah, I mean we know how good wild card are late, but they've lost their IGL
Spike who's gonna have to call this one from the grave positioning is not bad
But they still don't have control so watch out for spirits up top and a nitro punishes bay too
So now if the man count disadvantage kanzan and adrian will have to reposition
Adrian on the ground
Kanzan still upright things have gone pretty bad for this wildcard team
But again, you can never count them out when they're in this position and kanzan still alive
He's always a secret weapon and oh my goodness. Don't as learning that the hard way
Kansan breathing in some gas.
Is he now maneuvering himself?
He knows this map well.
This is the exact part of the map
where he pulled off one of the best clutches
we've ever seen in pro play.
He'll be brought back from the dead by Adrian
in a 2v2 with 10 seconds to go.
Kansan attempting to use plant.
Adrian to cover.
Right now, 100 thieves being a little bit sluggish
but taking a map control spirit will find one.
Kansan running out of time.
He'll survive.
100 thieves will win their first round
based on the clock.
You know, you have a little bit of an IGL entry in the midst of that Parker.
Spiker really just said screw it, we're going to send it right into the site and I'm going
to do it myself.
These are the types of plays you can make when you have a 21 year old IGL who is in the
peak of his career, did a good job finding that space, getting the gap into the bomb
site.
But as that was happening, they lose their shield player.
The trades don't favor them.
It almost feels like he's in a bit of a loan.
There are a couple of players in that printer window, but when Spiker dies, no one's able
to get that quick trade onto Kason.
Eventually, things do wind up in the ball court for 100 thieves.
They get one through this first quarter, but imagine how this game could look.
We could easily be steering it a 3-0 for 100 thieves if it wasn't for some miraculous play from Wildcard in the late round.
Yeah, again, we've had how many events where we've done that, where we're like,
yeah, this could be 3-0, yeah, this could be 4-1, but you have to just shut that out.
It's just noise at this point in time, so ignore it.
Get into the server and play with what's actually in front of you. Yes, there is a very good argument that you could have here that 100 thieves should not have lost those first two rounds.
The wild card should not have clutched them. The wild card does this against teams. They did it against DZ during kickoff. They did it with comfort behind victories throughout the course of this team's existence.
They don't make top four or top eight at almost every single event they go to if they are not a tough team in the closing moments
of a round and I mean Kansan and Bay Spiker as well. All of them have tons of high-light real clutches to save their team from the brink of defeat.
Hundred thieves obviously have to be aware of that. And I mean late rounds being good is something that a lot of teams in North America
practice. DZ is an excellent mid to late round squad.
They close out very effectively the depth they have the way that they use an utility on sports excellent
These need to manage that they need to be aware of wild card being a threat for up the entire three minutes
Of the round I think they're aware of that but sometimes Jesse just knowing it doesn't mean you're actually able to do anything about it
Well, we go back down to the bottom floor for around for Parker and this time we're a bit more standard on the off-line up for hundred
These this is going to be way more utility dedicated to denying that plants
They were not successful in stopping it back at around number one.
That was the 2v5 for Spiker and Kandyn.
So this one should be maybe a little bit less chaotic coming through for 100Bs as they do
play a 5-man anchor.
Adam up inside of open area.
It was really the Grim that was being played by Spiker here at around number one.
So with that ban, she'll just go to another displacement off and grab the Capitao.
Adam not looking to stick around.
So this is going to be a slow burn, Parker.
Do they try to focus on clearing server, dealing with spirits on those blue stairs, and then
getting past all the nitrous into the chunk of fire, or do you just say screw it, we're
going to ignore that and hit the map based on these can openers?
They're at least leaving that up as an option right now.
You hear the exkiros going away in the background doing the job that they need to do?
Spirits might be in some trouble here Jesse as Adrian needs somebody to cover him.
rarely do we see a shotgun swing blue to contest somebody opening that hatch
because if they do there's almost always a set of eyes staring in this
direction yeah you might get the person on the hatch but then you die blue
control is gone you know how important blue control is they've got a good read
on spirits as they drone him out he's now trapped though with that hatch being
open there is no real way for him to get back to servers with his life intact so
at this point in time as long as somebody from hundred thieves or as long
as somebody from wildcard watches this position hundred thieves will be without
Spirits they can just isolate him there will go to Nate they're gonna flame off the bottom as well
They can follow up with a gun
Spirits has a shotgun. That's the thing that's most dangerous. He's now tempts fade around this corner
Good collapse by wild card. They do that with 45 seconds still left. That is actual execution
That's perfect. The time is the big problem. They're still to shock up. They're still too nice for cells
There's a lot of utility being brought by hundred thieves that was not shown back around number one
So if wild card we're looking at this nicking
Okay, we'll get an easy plant just like the first time we attack the site. That's not gonna be the case. They need fresher
elsewhere
Missed opportunity for Bay
This case now finds his back turned to the weapon and Bay does
Incredible work inside the bomb site this bottom floor is infirm ownership of Wildcard
Hundred thieves with their two new players have yet to find the success at least immediate success that they had hoped
wildcard showing off the same brilliance we come to expect from them and
have seen over the last year or two. I really like that push from wildcard
again they're just playing with their food in these late rounds they're
always subverting expectations we were so focused on spiker over inside of
servers right they committed all of that utilities just to clear spirits you've
got to think okay well they're gonna be going for a planting through server but
spiker was the only player actually in that position when they went for their
actual execute 5v4. Sure, Spiker was locked out of sight, but Baby Sharp was running through it.
Bay was pushing down those bottom floors. You saw Kanzin having some value from the lobby hatch as well.
It is clear to me that Spiker is calling an incredible game. The late rounds have been put
together really well by a wild card, and 100 thieves need to do something to disrupt it,
because right now wild cards are just getting everything they want in these late rounds.
I don't know if we're on an extended tech pause or what here, but some meditation going
on in the faces of Wildcard does appear that there is a tech pause at play.
As we said during kickoff and we tripped over ourselves to say it with every single team
that made quite a number of roster moves, especially those surrounding their IGLs, there
is usually a break-in period where you need to get comfortable with your team.
M80 had instant chemistry with Savage.
You saw how effective that team was against Space Station,
demolishing them in the matchup right before here,
right before this game.
Hot and cold for what it's worth,
obviously can have an immediate impact on teams,
be it Mirage, be it Space Station, be it Dark Zero,
be it M80, be it Wildcard
when he subbed in at Salt Lake City.
But I mean, if you watched 100 Thieves' matches,
there was a lot of things that they needed to work out,
just simply bringing in a new IGL might not be enough to fix those in the span of a couple weeks.
Do keep in mind that Hundred Thieves likely made that roster change at some point in the last two weeks.
Since Salt Lake City or three weeks, since Salt Lake City ended.
So there hasn't been a lot of time for them to prepare for something that Bobby and Jesse talked about
in that tweet that was shown during the desk where he said,
not going to Salt Lake City gave us more time to gel with our new IGL.
Hundred Thieves didn't have that benefit because Hog and Cold was competing for Wild Card.
And you also find a Harky, Kacen is great.
I don't think anybody's gonna argue that,
but there is still an adjustment period
as he gets the hang of tier one play.
So Hunter Thieves could still easily win this matchup
for all we know, but I mean,
they've had a couple heartbreaking rounds.
They need to be able to put that behind them
and get back to winning ways and be a team that frankly,
we haven't really been able to see them be since kickoff,
but are hoping that with the potential this roster has,
they're able to meet.
I mean, I feel like coordination is a bit of an issue
for the original Hunter Thieves roster too, Parker.
I mean, Adam comes into this with the lowest trade percentage
of any player here in North America.
The Gomez and Spirits both have quite forced out
from the trade stats too.
So it definitely feels like getting those trades,
playing together, being coordinated
was something that Hunter Thieves were gonna have
to worry about coming into this stage.
And certainly they didn't have a whole lot of time
and kick off to practice some of those small moments.
So this would be their opportunity to work on that some more,
try to get that trade game in.
And frankly, they're not out of this game.
I mean, they're still holding on bank defense.
They can still run up these next couple of rounds,
put themselves in a winning position,
maybe not right away, because everybody in Walcrash
just left the game, but...
I have to imagine that we lost the facecamps as well,
that it is highly likely that they were having
internet issues or connectivity issues,
which last I heard is not...
Well, which players you have in visa problems
you might have don't really impact your internet.
So, in that sense, we'll wait to hear.
There was obviously a bit of a pregnant tech pause
before we got into that round,
and then they suffered through whatever is going on there.
But that is also one of the rare downsides
of playing at a team house,
is that if the internet crashes,
you don't lose one player, you lose everybody.
Have to imagine they lost internet
or they lost power or something like that.
And I mean, if you're in Los Angeles,
like 100 Thieves are,
you can see them playing at that 100 Thieves compound.
you best bet that Nadeshots got some internet service provider on speed dial
should there be a problem for this team and they seem to be okay for the time
being so don't know if we'll go to a breaker if we'll just continue to yap
on while we wait for wildcard to get back in but we'll update you of course
hundred thieves will have to sit in silence Jesse because tech pauses mean
no matter what the reason you don't get to talk yeah we did get word that this
is a power cut on the side of wildcard so your speculation is correct Parker
We're just going to wait to see if wild guard can get back in with some speed. Hopefully they can
Again, they've played a really good game so far today be ashamed to not see them continue that
I think hundred thieves have also had some strong moments
Case and struggling statistically a little bit
But I think he's again shown some promise with the positions that he's been forced to play
He's often getting one if not getting a multi frag, but then sometimes getting traded back
So there have been some glimmers of hope I think for hundred thieves and down three one is not the worst spot to be
Especially with a couple of defense rounds still to play here get that 3-3 split absolutely in the cards
So ought to see how it does move along and how it goes
I've been excited to see spirits as well
He hasn't really had the big pop-off moments that we were hoping to see
Since moving away from the IGO role and giving some of that responsibility over to hot and cold
I was thinking okay, are we gonna get old spirits back running and gunning with the shenanigan operators on the defense
the game. We've got a lot of
players that are going to be
going to the game. We haven't
seen that so much so far, but
excited for those next couple
of rounds in the second half.
When we start seeing spirits
jump on his yin, jump on his
glass, jump on his shields.
That's really where he's going
to thrive as a player.
Absolutely. If you look at the
hundred thieves roster just a
just add on to what you're
saying. If you look at the
hundred thieves roster from
kickoff, granted kickoff was
relatively short and because
hundred thieves got blown up so
early on, they didn't get to
teams played eight maps, 100 these played four, right? Because they went oh and four
and that was it. They were, they were done. So small sample size. Adam was the only player
in the top 30 from 100 thieves. Now, to be fair, Pambazoo was technically 30th. It was
just a tiny bit ahead of Volsper. And the rest of the team, the support in particular
were way in the bottom and spirits is a guy that you don't expect him to be the 43rd
of 50 players in a league.
That's just, it's way below what his expectations are.
It's way below what his standards are.
And frankly, it's way below historically
what we see out of him.
That whole team was bad.
There wasn't really any good looks on it.
Adam was the only guy collecting kills.
Sometimes you have one player popping off.
The rest of the team is not great.
Sometimes the entire team suffers,
which is more of what we saw,
let's say outlast, for example.
But you bring in a guy like Kacen,
you expect him to be near the top, period.
Of the team, of the league,
That's your expectation. You're bringing a guy like Hot and Cold.
Yeah, Hot and Cold's numbers have not been that great since playing Shields and being more of an IGL.
But he's still a guy who can have big pop-off moments,
sought with the Wildcard roster when he played as a sub in Salt Lake City.
There's a lot more fragging prowess on Hundred Thieves with them getting rid of Yaga and Pambazu.
So, the kills department should be doing very well.
But again, there might be an adjustment period as they try to find a new identity.
Hot and Cold and Spirits will need to settle in working together
and they'll have to sort out some rules here.
And, you know, Wildcard's a tough opponent
for you to have to go up against for your very first day.
So I don't envy the guys on 100 Thieves.
To be fair, tomorrow they do have a bit of a,
well, they don't, they always gonna make a joke.
They play M80 tomorrow.
So it'll be a great grudge match.
Then they play Cloud9 on Friday.
So they've got at least one easy match on paper,
but it is a hard start for 100 Thieves here.
I mean, they're gonna have to go through the fire
and the flames really early as a new team.
Yeah, and I mean, especially for Kason, right? I mean, this guy turned 18 on Monday.
He is barely even eligible to play in this league.
He's been waiting for this opportunity for over half his life at this point.
He started playing Siege when he was 8, so he has spent more of his overall life playing this game than not.
And now here's finally made it to 100 Thieves. He's finally made it up into Tier 1.
You're going up against Wildcard, one of the most tricky teams to play against
Here in the North America region, M8, you'll be a tough game, you're right as well.
Cloud9, maybe something to shine a little bit more.
I think the future looks bright for 100 Thieves, regardless of how this first week goes.
You've got such a capable captain in hot and cold.
You've got some really good core players around,
Kacen to play with, like Gomez and Adam too, who have been in the scene for quite a long time.
They've brought that history, they've brought that experience, they've brought that,
really just, I think, knowledge that Kacen can really grow from and learn from.
and I had a quick chat with him the other day,
just about kind of his journey getting up into this point
and his movement onto this team.
And he said he's mostly just excited to play
against some of the roller guys
that he's been playing with for years at this point.
And I'm excited to see him again,
continue to take over this league
and have some more big rounds.
And frankly, I mean, the console community
of Rainbow Six Siege is huge as well.
And I mean, there's no denying that if you watch
any type of content creation that's been done
over the last couple of years,
A lot of it has been driven by controller players.
You know, obviously, Jinxie led the charge many, many moons ago.
And dear God, I don't need to I don't need to hype up Jinxie.
A lot of people will hold the opinion that he almost single handedly saved this game
and its relevance and brought a huge spotlight to it.
And he's done it with other games now as well.
He's been playing like League of Legends and Rocket League.
And there's this Jinxie effect.
He just starts playing a game and suddenly the numbers of the game spike
because when you're getting 50, 60, 70,000 average viewers as Jinxie does,
It's going to bring attention to the game, but Jinxie hasn't been the only one, right?
We already talked about Aiden, we talked about Stompin, we talked about Raid, we talked about
Kacen, we talked about these guys who are young and they have a huge followings, they bring in
a ton of attention, they bring in a ton of fans, and a lot of them come from console.
The console scene used to have a pro scene, you know, 10 years ago. I think it's unlikely that we
we ever see console siege come back at a tier one level,
but there's tons of amateur tournaments
and it's really great to see controller players
and console players make the jump over to PC
and see those skills immediately translate.
Hell, Laxing, who's on our desk,
literally won a world championship
at the very first six Invitational on console,
playing on Xbox, on that Elevate team,
jumped over to PC when Xbox no is no longer supported
and he immediately became one of the best pros
in the region and competed at numerous LAN events
on a completely different set of equipment.
So it's great to see console players coming over here
and frankly it's siege is nowhere
without the immense amount of support on console,
irrespective of what console you play.
So great to see guys like that come over here
and make immediate impact.
Obviously Aiden had a bad day today
but we're still hoping that Kason can do
some serious damage here as we're,
it looks like maybe moments away
from getting back into the match.
Yeah, sounds like we've got players loading up into the lobby
and we should be starting in just a moment here.
So we do appreciate your patience.
Parker, you mentioned some of the open tournaments
and some of the lower level competition
that a lot of these players have come up in.
And again, I'll give a shout out to the NA Open Cups
that have just been announced across North America.
The first one will be in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
June 12th to 14th.
Enrollment is open if you'd like to jump in and play some competitive siege and that's the home state of Kacen as well
Who's making his professional debut up against wild card?
It is 3-1 if you haven't been following wild card really struggling in a lot of our earlier rounds here on bank
But they've had some excellent executes
They've been really good at focusing that the fuse get down and hundred thieves have let a couple of rounds flip from them so far today
So, taking Sharpen things back up, this 3-1 scoreline is not something that could be so devastating.
They can absolutely bring this back in class at the moment.
It's been a thread one for fans of Wildcard who've been enjoying this.
They had a lot of vocal supporters in Salt Lake City on that improbable top 8 run that they went on.
If you think a lot of them have one, it's a lot of cold effects.
And of course, he's just somebody that we're going to talk about a lot.
this point in time one of the most experienced players in the history of this game. You know if
you look at the best players in North America and you were to do just like say a Mount Rushmore of
NA players I don't think you could argue for him to be off of that I think he is certainly on it.
I mean obviously no matter where he goes he's going to get a lot of attention.
Hunger Beads has a lot of players that will have a ton of attention and Wildcard's going to give them
that. Exactly the attention that they desire off to the races they go. Logic Bomb called by the
The dope could be immediately Spiker chasing down hot and cold.
He manages to drop one, but Spiker is now retrievable.
They worry about the immediate follow up,
this is a bottom floor bomb site.
All hell is broken loose.
Kacen on the board down goes Adrian.
Wildcard will need to retrieve Spiker
as they technically trail in players that are still upright.
Baby Shark looking to cut off flanks.
The Spiker is retrieved from the dead.
Adam now dropped Kacen in the ground as well.
There goes Gomez.
And Spirits with a boss G is the last man standing.
Jesse, I don't like this one for spirits and after thieves.
Well, he'll get back towards the site and he might be able to pick up Adam here if they're not fast or on a punish inside a server.
It looks like they're taking their time to drone as Wildcard have consistently been doing this game.
So this will be a successful res on to Adam.
Now it's only a two on four, but as the spray comes through, not even a chance.
Nice couple of kills to come through at the end there and Wildcard will take the lead in this first half.
I mean really good stuff from Wildcard you can look at rounds number one and two and say
Ah, maybe you know flip a coin hundred thieves likely wins that you know more than 50% of the time you rerun those first two rounds
10 times Wildcard probably doesn't win them every single time those were both stunning rounds with come from behind victories
But a wins a win and the scoreline right now is for one
Yeah, you're a hundred thieves you could possibly look at this and go odd, you know
It should be a three two the problem is is that the last two rounds have been really good for Wildcard
a single kill for 100 Thieves in rounds 4 and 5 is just not going to get the job done.
Four players surviving on wildcard when they are going for these rush strats,
somewhat unconventional plays on this bottom floor bombsite. That's not good.
This is 100 Thieves going to locker CCTV three times, Jesse, and losing this bombsite every single time.
I mean, obviously you call your time out here, but you can't you've got to have a better rotation on a map like bank for crying out loud.
Yeah, I mean, you can see some of the frustrations coming through from the coach as well.
That's Vivas, the new head coach, 400 thieves was with team secret for all of last season in the beginning of this season as well.
So we talked about Savage coming over from North America.
But of course, the Brazilian coach, Vivas as well, making a bit of a trip coming in from EU.
EU, previous experience on M80 and Exet as well.
He's been around the block across all three of the big regions,
but wanting his team to be a little bit sharper
on some of these holes.
And I really think you have to give continuous credit
over towards Wildcard.
You look back at that attack and how well coordinated it
was with the Sten's walls coming out at the same time
as the logic bombs from Dokeby at the same time
as the shield making the entrance.
Wildcard are presenting really difficult pushes,
but still on 100 thieves to come up with solutions.
It's still on 100 thieves to keep their guns up
stop these pushes as they're coming in towards the bomb site. Something to work
on for this final round. You don't see coaches calling zap timeouts before round
six very often because you only have one round to put into practice the coaches
words but feeling like it's necessary to get the sports you have on bank.
Four-two of course the common score line that we are used to in Rainbow Six
Siege if it's the attacker side of map you expect four rounds by the attackers
Defenders the other way around just to be odd 3 3 5 1 quite unlikely to unfold, but this one
I don't know. I'm feeling like this might be another 5 1 here Jesse
I haven't really liked a lot of what I've seen from 100 thieves especially
Going back and hinting on that bomb site rotation 40 seconds off of the clock wild card assembling outside of the building right now
And a hundred thieves if they present themselves and surrender an early pick this might be curtains on the final round of this first half
Well, it's not like Wildcards get early deaths that struggle too much.
Not much to rush strapped, but it doesn't seem like we're immediately going in for that.
Hot and cold, the first one down, so it's a man advantage unless he gets recovered.
The second Firebolt goes through from Spiker, they're not able to secure any frags with
it though, so they continue to sit and buy their time.
Hot and cold does get secured, so that will continue to keep us at 5v5, but Smoke Bolt's
now put out, but it's a great shot from Gomez.
It lands ahead of Spiker and drops the kick to the floor.
Really nice play by Gomez, and honestly, Gomez was one of the guys that the broader community
assumed would be dropped alongside Yaga to make space for Kacen and hot and cold, but
there was a great conversation about his usage on this team.
Gomez is, I think, a better player than he's been given credit for through most of his
career, and while he likely won't be the standout performer on this 100 Deeds roster,
gonna be somebody who you need big moments and correct calling from. If you
have a couple big impact kills per game that's that's really what you're
looking for for a guy like him especially on his role and I mean hey
that's a pretty big impact here in round six. When wildcard lose bodies they
slow things down and start to call for their actual execute so they've done
that once again so often today that has resulted in a round victory. Worried
about the stock player, Cason does side in the hallway, you will hear the jump in and
and will go for the swing.
And down goes Adam with the hands of Baby Shark.
100 thieves losing out on those engagements,
casing down two.
100 thieves now outnumbered,
but with hands in, cleaned up as he's on the ground,
there's Gomez once again.
A forefront press from him.
As he has another one lined up,
he'll have to do even more damage.
Now his spirits is gone.
Gomez and Hot and Cold last two standing wildcard
with the upper hand for the moment,
especially with Hot and Cold's HP being so low.
This is a tough goal of it,
Gomez is having his way with this round.
Bree so far for him, trapped inside a paper,
looking for a fourth.
They've narrowed him down.
Han cold coming to the assist,
stacked up now over by the bomb chassis,
blocking Wildcard from getting on in.
Gomez will need to survive.
Oh my, baby shark gets him at the last second.
A nail biter that looked like it was going
100 thieves away, but Wildcard takes the round
and with it, five won the scoreline for the first half.
Honestly, looking at this last round, I just think of Wildcard.
They're incredible at closing rounds.
They should not win.
This 2v2, what a great example it is.
And so I have another example of that, that round 2.
It's a similar story.
It's a 3v5 for Wildcard.
They're on the attack and realistically no one should win that round.
But Wildcard, the experience on that roster is paying off in a certain way.
The first thing in this situation is you want to find an easy target and that's going to
He's alone, he's isolated into stock and so what this fighter doing?
He comes into the flight bird and what he wants to do is try to bait it, try to keep
him as much as possible, occupy it so that a player will come behind him and kill him
from the window.
At this point it's a 3v4 and now what do we see, Waka do?
They're droning the bomb site, they're getting information.
They want to know where are the last remaining four players.
They're aware there is a player in paper, there is one in meeting, but what about the
bomb site itself?
And here they spot Tugorov going into checkers and that triggers the final part of the plan,
Why are they doing that?
The small come to the mirror windows,
Adrien Rapples and Spiker is getting into the plant spot
and unlike many teams, they're not going for the plant.
They're faking it because if you look at the positions,
Adrien, who's deep inside, can look towards checkers.
Bay, all the way from Square, has control towards Banana
and towards Broom and Spiker, he's not planting.
He's just waiting for Atom to peek in from paper.
Infectively, this is a whole trap.
They're not here to plant, they're here to kill.
kill and so they he wins the gunfight towards spirits splice of the wins the
gunfights towards atom he eventually gets killed by the c4 but it's too late
from the 3d4 it's already a 2v2 and most importantly they've got side
control adrian can take Gomez from behind they is just waiting for them call to
swing and in this scenario instantly that's two 1v1s that they win what's
the main difference we're seeing here the main difference is we have a team that
has experience and then we have a team that is inexperienced and that's why
They keep on winning rounds that he should not win.
Yeah, and I think that's the biggest difference here is Wildcard is playing at the level that we usually see them at the
International play where they do a very good job at being able to problem-solve being able to isolate being able to force their opponent's hand
And exactly what you broke down is exactly what they did
They forced a hundred thieves hand by going for that post plan faking it Adam swings out gets that pick spirits
Died trying to come from banana and then they just completely collapse onto the site
But again, that's where the experience really shines and it's not to say that a hundred thieves necessarily is playing bad
But it just shows is yes, sure hot and cold has some camaraderie with some of these players
But they haven't had that structure yet
They don't have the trust in one another of the positions that they're holding how they can compromise and take other bits of control
While doing it together and wild card is punishing them on each and every single front and honestly
I could say when you're looking at the stats hundred thieves is going four out of six of the opening kills
They're getting these kills going in their favor.
They just need to know how to fall back and play into their lairs and force Wildcard's hand.
I love how both your brains work.
The fact that you're able to see that and identify their plan.
Great, great breakdown.
Well, we're going to get into this second half because it is already underway.
We need to see 100 thieves if they can really start to step things up.
I really know the results.
I think they won through that first half.
100 thieves on paper at least.
at least like a far more competitive team,
but the numbers have not been good
for these players whatsoever.
I mean, Gomez off of the back of his hero play last round
is still leading the team, but he's also six and six.
I guess I will say, Jesse,
if it's five, one and your best player, six, six,
that's not terrible, but then next best is spirits
and Kason, both sitting at three kills.
It obviously gets a lot lower after that.
And Adam, your highest rated player is one in five.
Fraggers have been having a rough day of it so far today.
So maybe it's just a different thing.
But I mean, yeah, talk about a really rough go of it
for 100 thieves and also the game condition.
We might actually have a rehersed here.
If Adrian's game is actually crashed, then yes,
looks like it's confirmed by the admins.
So we will go back yet again.
Jesse, your thoughts after hearing the desk?
Yeah, I mean, I really like the breakdown
that Alfaama was able to showcase to us.
The desk is absolutely right.
There were so many rounds there that Wildcard
should not have been winning, but they
were able to put together that late round execute
and find the success anyways.
And part of that, of course, is credit to Wildcard.
No doubt about that.
But you also got to look at 100 Thieves.
And at some point, you have to ask this team to, I think,
start getting a little bit more active.
It was a pretty safe defensive half, I thought,
from 100 Thieves, where they would get the advantage
in the early game.
And then they would really sit back on it.
100 Thieves were not a roster that
seemed like they were hunting for more frags,
that they were hunting to extend their advantage.
And that's not inherently a bad thing, right?
It can be the right call sometimes
to play it a little bit more safe,
to sit with your numbers and not try to get unexpected and make those plays.
But consistently, when Wildcard were given that space,
when they were given the room to set up for their executes,
they were finding success no matter what the odds looked like.
So, you have to wonder, maybe 100 Thieves if they could do it again,
would they try to be a bit more unpredictable?
Would they try to send Kason in to get some aggressive moves
to catch the enemy off guard rather than just sitting in a specific position
and holding their angles like we saw from Kason a lot through that first half?
I'm hoping if nothing else, we can start to see that evolve here on the attack.
If 100 Thieves can be let off the leash a little bit,
go for some of those more aggressive picks to try to go off on your own and make an advantage for your team.
That could be maybe what tilts this back in their favor, but it's a long road for sure.
Absolutely, it is. And I imagine the stop-go start of this doesn't help 100 Thieves either.
I mean, Wildcard obviously look like the more experienced team.
They look like they're able to play off each other and trust each other more, which really does stand a reason.
I mean, you've got the same squad you played kickoff with. Yeah, you obviously you lack that land experience
But you best know that when they came back from Salt Lake they were screaming and practicing with their full five again
Yeah, it looks like Adrian's visa issues have been sorted out. So now they're in the same room
You know, and then you've got a hundred thieves who have had
Relatively similar time to jealous a squad
But obviously have made a lot more changes and hot and cold in case and coming on to this team means that they're not going to
to be at their full potential just yet wild card just based on how much time they've had
as a team. They're definitely going to be able to rely on each other a little bit more.
So hands full for your very first game. Again, 100 thieves will play up against M80 tomorrow
and then cloud nine on Friday. So you've got one tough game and then one what might
be an easy game on paper. We honestly don't know cloud nine could end up being a tremendous
vote depending on what happens today and tomorrow. True. That's the other rookie that
we have being picked up just for the first time this stage. Monk will be making his debut
in our next match up against
Shopify Rebellion. He in case
and we're the only two players
to debut here for stage one.
Of course, we've got a lot of players
that debuted back during kickoff,
who now have a little bit of experience
under their belt. Many of those players
playing on outlast or five fears
who will make up our final contest
of the night. That'll be map five
here on the stream as
every team gets to play once
today and get their stage one
that's what they'd hoped for.
It's a couple of players that I
think are really excited and
come into this, maybe none quite
at the prestige as casein will
have coming on to 100 thieves,
but you look at guys like monk
and even some of the guys that
didn't perform quite to the
level they were hoping for on
Outlast. Guys like Millie, guys
like Veronica's guys like
Trev Mack. You know, there's a
lot of big names, I think that
are hoping to redeem themselves
or prove themselves for the
first time this stage and, uh,
And I don't know, it could be a really great story later in this first couple of weeks to see some of those come to light.
I think the matchups today are all pretty intriguing on paper. I don't know if you've been watching the EML games, but I mean, I looked at the EML lineup, and I've never been particularly good at predictions, but I saw the matches for EML, and I was like, oh, some of these seem pretty clear cut, and then boy, how wrong I was.
I mean, you look at the matches for today and it's like, I think there's, I think for the most part, the winners should be somewhat easier to guess.
I think a couple of them have been tougher, but I think by and large, this was the one matchup where I was like, I think it could go either way.
Well, obviously hinge upon whether Wildcard goes back to being dominant and whether 100 thieves have made substantial improvements.
I think Wildcard definitely look like they're doing really well, but again, it's hard to
judge because of those first two rounds.
Incredible moments, but not exactly the stuff that I think you can really rely upon.
100 thieves have made a step forward, certainly, but just as we said with that four-fun roster,
the former one of 30 team that played up against DarkZero in our first match, your improvement
is not necessarily as important as how much everybody else has improved, because if you
go from a six to an eight, but everybody else has gone from an eight to a 10, it doesn't
really matter what level of improvement you do, you're still just as far behind and are
going to look just as outclassed.
So Hundred Deeds still obviously have a lot more work to be done.
The scoreline being 5-1 in favor of Wildcard is a tough one to come back from, but crazy
things happen.
Crazy things happen in best of 3s, best of 5s, best of 1s.
You never really know.
All we know is that up next we have Shopify Rebellion vs. Cloud9, then 5-2s vs. Outlast,
as you pointed out, for our final two matches of the day.
It should be a fun opening day, I think, across the board here for North America, but again,
we appreciate your patience.
Looks like Adrian is back in the lobby.
The crash has been resolved, and so we are good to go for the second half.
Despite some really close rounds, 100 Gees were only able to get one on the board through
six, so this is going to have to be a turnaround on the attack here of Bank.
Not that I think it's super relevant because, again, they made two big roster moves, but
100 thieves did not get a chance to play bank, backtracking, kickoff, so this is their debut on the map.
And you're going up against Wildcard, a team who have had mixed success on this map, but have a little confidence on it.
Like, certainly this is not a bad map for Wildcard.
You maybe expect some of those struggles to be coming through, especially in some of those late rounds.
But now is your chance to turn the tides.
Now is your chance to find a little bit of an opportunity on the attack and disrupt what Wildcard has been doing for six rounds so far.
I like seeing Jason on the snake. I like seeing spirits on the Dokobie. I like seeing Gomez and Adam on these drone operators
The information is going to be very big for 100 feeds this round.
Can I already tell?
Knock knock!
But did I have least so? Dokobie escaping the clutches of the operator bands.
We have seen a lot of teams opt to not go with the reworked Korean operator who is oh so strong at the current point in time.
point in time. So strong in fact that if you have kept your head buried in the sand you wouldn't
have seen that Ubisoft already announcing that they are going to nerf her because of her immediate
impact on the game. Can't say I will miss an overpowered Dokeby and I will give massive credit
to Ubisoft for being so quick to make that change you know especially when you look at Lion and
Blackbeard and Ellen some of these operators that were just so oppressive for so long. So when Dokeby
gets more in line. Will her bandrate and pick rate continue to be the same? I honestly don't know,
but there's no lack of information on intel, even without Dokeby. And 100 daves have used that very
quickly, Jesse. 115 already in the map, already chasing around these roamers. Yeah, one escapes,
but Spyker is in Mistro, and Parker, he's on the admin hatch, and unfortunately just misses those
shots, brings up the shot time, and the Nitro, but it's from behind. That's where Hot and Cold is,
with the SMG, it's a rat play that doesn't pay off for the captain, and if you think that's all,
You are in for a surprise. Wildcard steal one more Romer, Baby Shark, just flanking him through open area and shot down by Gomez.
So, two aggressive players on this Wildcard defense and both of them into dirt early.
Does he tell the truth? Are you actually around ahead of what we're watching?
Do you know this? Did you write the script? Because you have called this so well so far.
And I mean, information is always the name of the game.
You know, Snake, Deimos, Stokebe, Lion is back up if absolutely necessary.
Lots of drone operators, lots of Twitch, lots of Bravo, lots of Flores.
Maybe not so much Flores these days, but all of them obviously also work as information operators.
It's been a good conversation had by the community.
Hundred Thieves are using it really effectively.
Down Ghost Spirits, he's the only one on the team that's died.
Bay is bleeding out, so Hundred Thieves have lost one, but they at least land a bit of a counter punch.
They just need to get Bay up off the ground, and Wildcard will have more of a fighting chance.
If not, it stands on the shoulders of Kansan and Adrian.
They finally finished off by Haughton.
Gomez low on HP, so Kansan and Adrian have been working out for them,
and oh my goodness, it is a wave of kills of which 100 thieves comes out on top.
They'll pick up their second round coming here on the second half.
I think it's really a round where Wildcard are trying to play with the momentum, right?
You just get off a 5-1 half and you've had some tech pauses here in the midst of it, too.
So you want to keep the energy high.
You want to keep the momentum rolling for your squad.
Why not go for a bank-basement defense where you're playing a little bit more aggressive?
Both the top floor roamer and then also Spiker, playing on the mausoleum just inside of admin,
were not found out by a hundred thieves, at least not right away.
Spiker was hardcore just mistroamed and then the player on the top floor
was either unexpected or maybe they kind of had an idea, but they didn't
dedicate their push to going through and clearing out Baby Shark.
So there was a lot of aggressive positions being played by Wildcard in the midst of that,
Despite some of the intel game not going perfect for 100 Thieves, it really still was a great job shutting that down.
They reacted really nicely to Wild Cards aggressive moves.
And I think it may be a lesson going through these next level defenses with Wild Cards.
You don't have to make this mess. You don't have to over complicate things.
If you play a standard game of siege that's focused on the usual, you might have a bit more success than trying to go for these flanks.
100% green. I mean, 100 Thieves are also de-shackled from that bottom floor bomb site
where they lost three of the rounds that Wildcard used to pad their lead, so now that they
can play on attack, they don't have to worry about being stifled by a potential poor bomb
site rotation defending, so maybe they'll go from walking to running in this second
half of the game. It is honestly hard to say. Wildcard is still a formidable team no matter
and they do still have the leg up when it comes to player prowess and experience.
Those things don't necessarily guarantee you a victory be that in a single matchup or in an event.
By the way, Hunter Thieves looking like a better team with Hotten in casein,
it's just a matter of feeling comfortable with each other.
I'm also going to be keeping an eye on Adam, his number is still really quite poor.
He's the bottom of the team right now, again a very far cry from this potential.
If he is not able to find that next gear,
I do worry a little bit for 100 thieves.
I don't think a guy like Kason or potentially even Gomez
is going to be able to carry all that work.
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that Adam really the only player
with his head above water back during kickoff for 100 thieves.
He was their best player by far.
So we want to see a bit more of Adam,
a Southern California native who joins hot and cold now
from that region.
Here playing from the Los Angeles studio as you mentioned.
So a lot of hometown heroes
trying to break up this top floor attack. Once again, these players are hunkering down.
They're being a little bit more standard. And this is what I wanted to see after you
try to a crazy two man roam game in round seven, ran it in for round eight, play behind
your electricity, play behind your mirror windows, force 100 these to try to crack this
egg.
I see you. I'm gonna take what's activated.
Jesse, you don't usually want to crack egg.
You want the egg to stay intact.
You crack the egg in the egg.
Spill all. That's messed up. You don't.
100 thieves are trying to make an omelet. They gotta crack a QA.
Are 100 thieves in the kitchen yet?
It looks like they're still outside the building, Jesse.
You're cracking egg too early.
I digress.
I'm not taking any advice on cooking from you.
I have senior streams.
What you're talking about?
You're talking about.
So yeah, I saw you spill an entire thing of mac and cheese all over your stove, Buster.
I ain't, I'm not, I'm not buying that.
Everybody's still alive, and what is one of these flowest rounds so far between these two contestants?
And Wildcard is really hoping to move to match points.
Gonna come a little bit harder in this round in particular.
They've lost bay, they trade out hot and cold.
So Spiker on the scoreboard.
Spirit's marching his way in, reflecting bullets.
Adam on the board.
Spirit takes matters into his own hands.
Now another lined up on the cans in and that is the round.
Goodness gracious.
Blink and you missed it.
A third now as 100 Thieves win back to back rounds.
And a beautiful push to the top, Floor Parker.
They take their time and they look quite a lot
like Wildcard did on their attacks.
It took over two minutes and 15 seconds
to get our first frag in that round.
It was played so slowly by 100 Thieves,
but they were able to buy their time out on the windows,
get spirits in on the Blackbeard.
This is what we wanted to see from this team.
We talked about Spirits moving over to the attack,
getting in his comfort zone, playing these shields.
We finally saw him taking that space.
One of the best aggressive shield players in the entire world.
He's able to get that momentum going for his team.
They lose a couple of bodies here and there.
It's not a perfect attack, but in the end,
I'm really surprised by how coordinated it was
from 100 Thieves.
They were all moving together.
And for a team who have been a roster
for less than a month at this point,
I was really impressed by how good
some of these attacks have looked so far.
Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why you bring on a guy like hot and cold.
I know that M80 were unhappy with him as a leader and felt that maybe he wasn't
as relevant to the current meta and they weren't able to adapt as quickly.
These were all things that were said by the team after he was dropped.
But I mean, he's given a bit more structure to these attacks here on
hundred thieves.
They are sharp.
They know how to take map control.
They are quite quick.
They are thriving in this current meta with information.
You so rightly called it in round number seven.
Intel is going to be huge for this team and the guy on your screen right now
French Canadian spirits you've also got hot and cold you've got two really good
minds for the game if they are able to work together they can get so much out
of Deimos they can get so much out of Snake they can get so much out of
Dokobie and immediately pounce upon it wild card showed that off in the first
half with their attacks winning five of six rounds on attack now 100 Bs are two
for two on their attacks. This is just a very lopsided attacker friendly bank with only one
defender round victory so far. If you're wildcard that's making me a little nervous because you're
defending for the remainder of regulation. You gotta find some way to do a little breakthrough
on this half. It's not usually thought of as the difficult side in the siege but in this matchup it
seems like that's the way it's going. Archives and tellers will be the answer for wildcard and I'm
Honestly, kind of shock light is further. This is your last chance to play these bomb sites before the fourth quarter
That means the new operator bands gonna come throughout for this round
That also means that if you win a site in these next couple of rounds, you're not gonna be able to repeat
I thought they'd go back towards the basement play it a bit more standard go for a little bit less of a roam game
But instead they will risk it on not even the tertiary
But the fourth site for the bats majority of teams going to the mid floor to try to throw off under these
This is a risky bet from Wildcard, but I think after their attack time out, it clearly got something up their sleeve with it.
It'll be their third time defending on this bombsite so far this season. They have a one-in-one record, so anything is possible for this round nine.
9. Just as we saw from these previous rounds, it's a bit slower on these attacks for a hundred
things and I mean if you feel confident in the operator lineup you're bringing and you've
got a plan and that plan involves a full clear of a large map like bank you can take your
time you managed to chase baby shark off this top floor you almost got busted by those railings
that had not been shot out, spirits could have very easily collected that kill, he was a little bit faster than the ADS.
I mean, is Valkyrie not integral that you stay alive? Because you can always go on your cams afterwards, but you know how good a lurking Valk can be here.
Always threatening, baby shark, one of the scariest players here on Wild Card.
Never know where he's gonna end up, so you've gotta watch out for that.
minute 23 here we've got full top floor control from 100 thieves but look at
this the information is so good from wildcard if they can play around these
valgrade cams and try to try to just guide these nitrous cells being played
by both canson and shark they might have an opportunity to disrupt this push
before it gets going the worst case would be allow 100 these in for a 5v5
execute they've got so many good tools with all this vert pressure shield from
spirits chasing here on the snake as well they'll have a lots of tools try to
to get in and take site control 45 seconds everybody's still alive again a very sluggish
pace here last round first opening pick in 42 seconds to go is the slowest round this
one will be even slower now is 10 seconds have transpired and not a single kill so 10
players still upright with 30 seconds left on the clock this is going to be a really
tough one. Typically these situations favor the defenders, but Gomez will get the lead
off pick. They fighting his way over towards Square Stairs. Spirits is found in open and
he gets the diffuse kick to the halfway point. Gomez drawing the attention of these wildcard
players and right under their very noses, 100 thieves gets the diffuse kick off. They
come back looking very real at this point in time. Wildcard need to be quick to pounce
on 100 thieves but have allowed them to reposition with diffuse kick down. This does not bode
well for Wildcard. Hansen inside the site had a line up on one. He'll find Gomez taking
towards the top floor shooting through the wall. Hansen's not alone. He's got a whole
lack of teammates that need to use some serious work. K-Spen, a kill, down goes spirits. Wildcard
losing out on the time. They're going to need to watch Spiker as he gets down on the kit.
Adam shuts him down and we'll find two as hundred thieves have closed this gap in a hurry. One
round separating these two teams as Wildcard is on one hell of a streak.
And we are slowly unveiling the personality of 100 thieves Parker.
This is not a team we're going to explode into the server and take things quickly.
They take their time but damn do they produce some excellent executes after that time has
taken.
It's just so methodical and so ready to play around their utility.
You saw them take top floor control.
They had a buck and a ram, so the vert pressure was phenomenal to come through and make that bomb site feel so small
They were holding angles on square
Those were very advantageous fights that they took kind of on that east and south side of the map
While these players were winning done fights over towards square
Spearish's gets in with the with the smokes and the shielding get the plant down
Nobody is really aware of this going on and even if they were with the vert pressure above
It's so difficult to position yourself to stop that plant. It's really really tough
And so 100Ds after watching Wildcard go through five of those six attacking rounds with brilliant executes by taking their time by slowing the game down
They've really stolen the playbook away from the gestures and have used it to great success themselves
Absolutely, I love the gestures callback here on Wildcard not to not to glaze a little bit
But Wildcard is one of the few rebrands in recent memory that I think is better than the old logo that they had
And I think they really nailed it with the rebrand of Wild Card 5.
Obviously, I'm not the barometer of what is a good rebrand, but I do quite like it.
And obviously, as casters, it's nice to be able to play off of that hundred thieves being able to say
The Thieves, Shopify Rebellion in our very next game, being able to say The Rebels or The Rebellion.
Also quite nice for Wild Card.
You can make jokes about stacking the deck and royal flushes and the gestures, the jokers, etc.
Typically, when we call them jokers, though, that's not a good thing, so we try to avoid that one.
But Wildcard obviously suffering through this.
Nine rounds have been played here on Bank,
as you can see on the top of your scoreboard.
And only a single round of those has been won by the defenders.
So both of these teams have really suffered through
the cavernous map of Bank.
Being an attacker's paradise for 100 thieves,
pretty happy about that one.
All Wildcard needs to do is match the tally
of that first half.
One single defending round win,
and Wildcard guarantees themselves a shot at overtime.
That's not gonna be good enough for them though, Jesse.
They're gonna want to win in regulation for hundred thieves. You are hoping maybe a perfect half
That lets you a win in regulation and that would be hard to come by but with the way hundred thieves is playing
I don't know that kind of like their chances at the moment
Walkard have lost three bomb sites on bank and it said let's try a fourth open area for around 10
They have yet to repeat a site and they have yet to find success
So all the long sides continue to be unlocked here comes the clear immediately a zombie drops down
that's going to be Bay finding success back down towards his team.
Kason finds Adrian and we're in the sight of the spirits.
And there's a name that will go off the Azami now running for the hills.
Bay yet to get a kill since coming back from this re-host.
Kason dies at the hands of Kason. A really good round so far for Kason.
There goes baby shark. 100 thieves showing why the attackers
drew so well. Spiker and Bay last to be standing.
There goes Bay. This has gone from bad to worse to just
down right no good no hope whatsoever in comes the blackbeard spiker has his hands full he takes
down spirits still to remain but with the diffuse kit going down this one's gonna be mighty tough
spiker playing ring around the wall with the nitrosil now going out taught and finish off hold
on a moment they did it in the first half when they were attacking how is their luck on this second
half. Spiker with Nitro Sally looking to thread the needle on to Adam. There she goes! Adam
survives and Ty being spiker hoppy on the diffuse kit. Adam punishes him! Oh my goodness!
X hail! Hundred thieves! Fans! We've got ourselves a Ty game! Very close. Probably too close for
comfort but Adam is able to stop this shenanigans wild card. Their captain of Spiker can only
do so much in that impossible situation. It's a world tour from 100 Thieves as they win all four
bombsites on bank and they do it on attack. You don't see that every day feeling confident no
matter where that bombsite ends up being. Really nice play from Kason, probably his best round that
we've seen from him as a professional player. Just ended up jumping in the printer window while
all that other chaos was going on with the top floor clear, the stock push from the blackbeards
it's dropping back down towards the site all eyes won the shield in case and took full advantage of that to get a
Beautiful little triple give his teammates that man advantage and then Adam again played it perfectly in the 1v1
Notice the pros don't think so go for that frag take down Scyther and win the round
There's some concerns about how exciting a matchup this would be at the halfway point
We saw that 5-1 scoreline and then of course got hit by a wave of tech issues that seem to be falling
wildcard disproportionately and we were like, okay, well, you know, this one might be pretty quick and, you know,
off to cloud nine Shopify rebellion, we go as our fourth match of the day. And then the siege gods smiled upon us and said,
that would not be the case whatsoever. And we are yet again destined for all 12 rounds.
Over time, I want to stay looking likely because I do think it is very unusual for a team to go 6-0 in the second half unless they are
deeply unmatched. I don't necessarily agree that these teams are as unmatched as they looked
to that first half. There's a reason why we played two halves of Siege. Jesse, and right now it's
looking like attackers are doing well, but I don't know. I know I said at last round that it's
definitely possible, and it still is, but I have to imagine Wildcard win a single defense, which is
what propels us to overtime. I mean, momentum is fully whipped under these. Something different has
to come through, but the advantage for Wildcard is that they've played all four sites, and they can
diagnosed whichever problem they feel is easiest to solve. They start with the bottom floor,
they say Basin's going to be what we can count on to try to pull this game back.
It's not an aggressive roam game, they brought a couple new tools to the site that they didn't
have last time, one of them Adrien here on the pulse, the other spiker over on the mirror.
So they've got a couple different resources to play with to try to work themselves into an
advantage state, lots of nitrous to play around, and with this pulse, do you ever try to call for
a flank. They don't really have anyone in position to go for that. Getting out of bank
basement and trying to aggress into one of these players can be really tough unless you're
doing something silly like an orcs, so I don't expect any aggression, but if they're trying
to play for the late rounds, if they're trying to go for a plant, that pulse can still find
great value in knowing what's going down.
The fastest first blood that's been spilled in this second half, which for the legris,
100 thieves are a perfect 4 for 4 on striking first. It's just again going to show the dominance
of these attackers.
100 thieves absolutely dominating in first blood, period.
Wildcard's only done so two of the 10 rounds.
And they'll get a third.
Huge time to break some momentum here,
but every single one of these attacking picks
from 100 thieves have come in about the halfway mark
or later.
This time, we're at one minute to go.
100 thieves will find their very first pick of this round.
It's on the baby shark that'll equalize on numbers.
Spirit's watching his boards lose by him.
Hot and cold now on the board.
Spirit's taking matters into his own hands.
It's Adam to actually get the kill on that one.
They immediately turn their attention
towards the elevator as Kansan and Bay
are the last two standing from Wildcard.
Kansan patrolling from above, Bay in the thick of it.
He's been forced out of the back of the bomb site
now sitting by a watching bee.
He's worried about the cross for good reason.
You'll need Kansan to distract them
or else Bay is as good as dead in this position
and Hunter Deves will gain their very first lead
of this map.
There's Bay to take out Gomez.
Spirit's pulling off the diffuse kit.
Where is Kansan though?
If you think it goes down successfully,
the fans are finished off by Adam.
It's all up to Bay, the weapon.
He'll he be employed well against this 100 thieves attack
that has now stolen your bomb site.
No, Adam shuts the door, 100 thieves take the lead.
What a comeback it's been for them.
The game is falling apart, Parker.
100 thieves have been running with it
and flawless through five straight attacks,
four different bomb sites, different strategies
and different approaches with different ops.
It has been miraculous to watch 100 Thieves rally
for a lot of these pushes,
and I continue to be impressed by their late round reads.
They're taking their time clearing through those top
couple of floors.
They're waiting for their moment,
and then you saw the opportunity from Kanzin.
He finally finds the time to sneak up those main stairs,
but when they notice them on the side of 100 Thieves,
they don't kill him,
but they catch him rotating up those stairs.
They say, screw it, we've already lost a player in Kason,
but let's just go hit site.
Let's go make this magic happen.
We know a player is roaming up above,
so let's just make him irrelevant.
Kanzin not able to really have an impact in that round
until he's way too late into the post plant.
It's a great shot from Day to make that a 2v2,
but really, 100 Thieves were able to just flood the site
and now up six to five from a position
that previously looked impossible to close out.
Wildcard are potentially losing in regulation
up against this 100 Thieves team.
This has been an unbelievable run, and Jesse, I'm gonna have to do something that we said we didn't really want to do, which is I'm gonna go back to rounds number 1 and 2.
And I'm gonna say both of those rounds were won by desperate attempts from Wildcard in the dying moments of the round.
The 100 thieves that we've seen in the last 20 minutes or so is not the same 100 thieves that started this map.
They are playing with a lot more confidence, it took them time to find their game.
If that hundred thieves, if we flip these halves, and hundred thieves was defending, and it was still to come,
I honestly think hundred thieves walks away with this victory.
I don't think we see wild card as close as we do right now.
So wild card of anything benefited greatly from a much slower start from the thieves.
And I mean basically everything is going in favor.
You know the team on the left side of your screen right now.
So a 6-0 half is shaping up to be the most likely option.
And if that's what happens, 100 Thieves walks away with an incredible 7-5 victory.
A little over two minutes to see if that ends up coming from thought into reality.
Adam 7-0 since our last re-host. He had just one kill on the defense half.
Adam was really struggling and we mentioned it a couple times because he was their best player back in kickoff.
But now, how he has come alive, seven straight kills here against Wildcard.
They've got to find some kind of an answer to him and to the rest of this 100-thieves push.
Spirits has consistently been on these shields, whether it's the Blackbeard or the Blitz,
who's been taking really good space, and there's not been a good answer to come through from Wildcard so far.
The top floor site, the utility looks good, right?
Laser gates, mirror windows, this is all strong utility, but 100-thieves, they will take their time and clear this.
They will spend two and a half minutes making sure this utility isn't a problem before they go for their execute.
for their execute. You have to start thinking if you're Wildcard, we need a hero, we need
to make a play, we have to do something to disrupt the status quo.
Who's gonna emerge from the phone booth with the giant s on their chest, the cape on their
back to save Wildcard at the moment? Numbers across the board for Wildcard have fallen
off a cliff. Kansan and Bay leading the way on this team. Spiker technically positive.
Adrien at the bottom, he'll find his fourth kill so far, but it comes onto Kacen, that's
the Zofia down, there goes Gomez, they will get traded out and now they're
burning Adrian alive in his position over on the double panel often referred
to as Kanto, he now needs to get out of his spot. It's a good opportunity for
Wildcard and they have a rare moment where they have a numbers advantage in
the second half. Baby Shark is such a rat, they have no idea, they suspect
someone's down below but they don't know what door he's playing already in
behind the teller's desk. It's waiting for some information from Adrian before
he goes for his play but if Baby Shark chooses his timing correctly he could
He's giving his position away and will be hunted down by hot and cold, hot and almost losing that duel.
That was one or two bullets away from a potential end to this piece of regulation and then overtime, obviously, what happened in front of us.
Wildcard does not get out of this without a win in regulation.
A swing in now from the Blackbeard of Spirits, down goes Adam, Kansan can swear away on that engagement.
down goes Adrian suddenly it's hot in a 1v2 him versus Kansan one second left and
he will run out of time he had to read he just did not have the time wild card
survived the scare five rounds in a row 400 thieves wild card break the streak
and off to overtime we go and hot and cold the new captain knew exactly where
that last player was at he had the pre-fire but unfortunately not able to
find that last kill so close. Overtime is upon us. Parker after losing 5 straight defenses,
Wildcard will pull out a 1v1 on time. It is not the most dominant or confidence inspiring
win, but they don't ask how. That's going to be 6-6 now on the scoreboard, and they
kind of did what I was hoping for, right? Whilst we were waiting in that mid-round, once
100 geeds were getting set up, they were using their capitol bolts, their ace charges, their
Smokes all of their utile to try to force those players out of position
Somebody got aggressive. It was an initial move from it
I believe it was Adrian up from top of elevators to get that frag and then even baby shark going down below playing inside of tellers
Does he get a kill? No, but he distracts enough players
He distracts enough time that the rest of his teammates can continue to get aggressive can continue to throw a wrench in the midst of that plan
It's good enough for a round win. Wildcard will get defense and overtime. I'm not sure that's a blessing at this point
No, not at all. Two rounds, one by the defenders of the 12 rounds in regulation. The tie did
shift a little bit on some of the underlying numbers that we look at in those final two
rounds of regulation. 100 thieves dropping opening picks in both rounds 11 and 12 and
they came with a minute to go. 100 thieves, we've noted, have been a bit slower on their
entry than what we saw out of Wildcard. The problem is that if you're slow and then you
You concede the first pick with only say 45 to a minute left in the round.
That's usually quite devastating for you on attack.
You lose valuable utility ops.
You lose a guy like Kacen both times.
He's playing a very important position for 100 thieves and has been so critical in the
mid to late round that when you lose him early, you're in rough shape.
I mean, hey, look at what he just did.
He catches baby shark.
They drone baby shark out of open area.
It's not just Kacen by himself, but he's the one credited with that kill.
That's huge value.
Losing him early in two straight rounds, that's enough to doom this team, and that could be
a huge part of why they ended up in overtime against Wildcard.
Baby Shark with that death now, six and ten on the combined statistics.
He has really been struggling since the Rio.
It's the complete opposite story than what we just mentioned for Adam.
Seems like since we hit that half swap, Adam just sucks the life away from Baby Shark,
and it's just been so difficult for either of those players to find value on the defense.
He starts all alone on that roam, gets hard punished.
I cannot imagine that Adrian sticks around long enough to die in this elevator position.
The second he feels pressured or like he's in danger, he should drop, and in fact now
he has, so four players left alive on wildcard.
They will all return to the basement, I'll say it before, and I'll say it again.
The utility is good, but is it gonna be good enough with 100 Thieves having half the rounds
still to go?
They're gonna have these Stens Walls inside the site, they still got all of their Grim
charges from Gomez to try to make some space and clear up some of these player
utilities, player positions, Kason was still a ton of utile here as well on the
demos and now they've spotted out bay. This could be bad. I mean this is a bomb
site where again you have that rotation right you have to wait out the fire you
have to wait out the gas the nitro cells the goya canisters whatever lays in
front of you you cannot be behind the clock on this hundred these will just
simply run at a time they will fight day they manage to secure that kill pretty
easily and can now immediately translate that. Three bodies still upright for wildcard with 50 seconds to go.
I actually kind of like this for 100D if they just need to wait out the nitro cell and then all the flames from the tachanka
providing they've managed to take out the goyo canisters. That is the big question, Jesse.
If those goyo canisters are still around, the job of getting the plant down could be mighty tough.
Hot and cold and maybe working for a back execute here, Jesse.
I don't know where they changed the cans and surprised us hot and cold.
Oh my goodness, that might have just won the round for Wildcard right then and there.
Kansan can now fall away.
Defuse kit retrieved by Spirit.
Gomez takes care of Spiker.
15 seconds to go.
Kansan can still quarterback this from far enough away.
He'll have to do it all by his lonesome, but they are looking to mob him in this position.
Defuse kit getting planted.
Kansan on his belly.
No hope whatsoever.
He clutched out that round back.
or he plus out that map on that bombsite back on the first round of this map cannot do it again the first round of OT a
Triumph and take buy hundred thieves almost derailed and they go back to match point
One of the newest orgs in North America is quickly cementing themselves as one of the best attacking teams in the region as well
They continue to impress on these early rounds Parker where they're winning these opening duels
It's baby shark all alone and then it's Bay all alone and with these players again wild card
They're almost relying on hundred these to be a bit sloppy on some of these moments
You know when hundred thieves are planning things out when they've got full information when they're able to go things slowly and pick apart your defense
One player by one. They're finding so much success with it
The mistro is just aren't really going their way
They're not be able to play aggressive and the one thing that gives me a bit of a shining hope in the midst of that round
It's Kansan finally catching someone off guard
Flames them on the hatch, but it's too little. It's too late already the man advantage deep enough around her thieves
They move back to the defense for one final time on bank
Even if they lose this with how good their attacks have been round 15 is gonna be really hard for wildcarts to win
It's still at least two more rounds to go
But yeah, hi, I'm a little worried the writing is on the wall just simply based on how
dominant this has been for the attackers. I will say one maybe saving
grace a wild card if I can be the devil's advocate for a second here Jesse is
that things tend to flick when we get to overtime. You'll look at a map where
ten rounds will be won by the defenders and then the attackers will win every
single round of OT. It does happen. I don't know why it happens in overtime.
It could be a lack of familiarity. It could just be if you're starting on a
different side you're not as locked in. Sometimes teams will literally just blow
up their strats and try different things. There's a lot of reasons for it, but I mean if I'm Wildcard,
I'm a little bit worried at this current point in time about their mental. They were able to win
a must needed round back in round number 12, so they're obviously still some staying power there,
but you mentioned Baby Shark. He's the first one to die. Adam911, and yeah, I'm calling the police
if I'm Wildcard because right now Adam is mugging these guys. We're gonna get an immediate highlight
Oh my goodness
It's never good when you get a highlight with two minutes to go and I oh
No, no that's these
That's an unfortunate I mean they were down in the rounds, but even still this is a
Wait on admin calls figure what is gonna happen throughout this rounds, but this is a nightmare. What do you what do you do?
ah
Like and if you're having tech issues and the Internet is crashing and and I'm not gonna say what I'm gonna say because I'm accusing any teams of this
But you know I there are certain teams where tech issues seem to come at very convenient times
Wildcard do not strike me as that type of squad. It's like they're you know
Hey, baby shark died someone kick the router. I think this is just have been a problem that's been happening
But I mean 100 thieves got the first pick. They're in good shape, but it's been anybody's game so far
Attackers obviously have a huge impact and have been very successful wild card was attacking even down on numbers wild card while attacking down on numbers in rounds one and two
One both of those rounds, but the the rehost is likely coming after the point of no return
So if you're an admin, what do you do? What a nightmare that is for them to make a decision here?
Yeah, no doubt there have been rulings in the past. I don't want to say this will for sure happen
we'll wait to hear but
in the past it has been where if a player dies then the rehost does not come through and any tech pauses that come through any tech issues that
Happen you just kind of have to roll with
that would mean
86 for 100 these at this point of course they get the default round win
I mean how poetic is it that it's Adam taking down baby shark for the one frag that we got to see in
That final round because Adam has been the guy who since the half swap has completely leveled up and baby shark was the guy who has
has fallen apart. Since moving on to the defense,
this could be a devastating turn of events for Wildcard. They will try to get back in and they will try to continue this over time,
but with 100 Deeds firmly in control here, again, even if we can get back and resume this matchup, it's going to be the deck stacked against Wildcard, frankly.
No way. You just said deck stacked against Wildcard. Come on.
Come on!
This is what they got to deal with when they lose five attacks or five attacks.
Yeah.
This is going to be a rough one because what's the right decision to make here?
You're going to be pissing somebody off no matter what the call is.
I think there's really good arguments here that, you know, obviously, in a perfect world
you would say, okay, look, you can't help tech issues like that, we just have to replay
the round.
But if you're a hundred thieves, you're saying, we got the opening pick, this isn't our problem.
Why are we replaying the round?
this is not our fault. If you're wildcard, you're saying, well, we were down numbers
attacking back in the first half and we won those rounds. You can't just immediately discredit
us. There's really, I don't know the rule book. I'm not an admin. I know that a lot
of people seem to think we are just because we talk about the game, but I generally, I
probably know the rule book less than a lot of the people watching this because it's not
my job to know the rules. That's up to the admins. But I just, I, God, I don't, I just,
I don't know what you what you do here. I think there's really good arguments for just about every decision you can make in this circumstance. But no matter why you're going to piss somebody off. You're going to piss off 100 thieves in their fans by, you know, forcing them to go. But another round. If you make it or you piss off wildcard by hand in the match to 100 thieves.
Well, Parker, I'm a bit tired of yapping. So let's bring our desk in quickly and see what they have to think so far about the situation.
Thanks guys, we were off to a really great start tonight and then all of a sudden this
game has been just completely derailed by tech pauses while we wait for a decision on
the end of this. We wanted to jump in here. I mean, this has been a very good game. It's
not necessarily unfolded the way we expected with the 5-1 to 5-1 split, Leo, but this is
a competitive matchup between two teams who are just going blow for blow.
Absolutely. I know that Lex is going to like what I'm about to say, but I think it's just
a great estimate of how good of a region NA is becoming because we're not talking about
the two best teams in the region, not talking about Shopify Rebellion, not talking about
DarkZero, we're talking about two teams that have had their struggles, Wildcat that historically
struggles online, and at the same time, 100 teams that had a terrible kickoff, that have
problems now, really the sheep, a young rookie in case that I think has been really interesting.
And most importantly, Gomez, really showing up here in this matchup, and Adam as well,
the two core players seem to be enabled by the vision of Houghton Cold, and we're left
with a bank that is heavily attacker-sided.
It's beautiful to see.
It's supposed to be in the long run, the hardest side.
It shows that it displays that these teams really
has good vision and really is able to make these two players,
these two core players shine.
Yeah, and that's why we're really being able to see them thrive
is because they don't have to take on any other ideal roles.
They don't have to ask questions of what's happening.
It's really hot and cold being able to lead that front
and allowing these players to really focus
on what they do best.
And that's being able to take map control.
That's being able to get frags,
that's being able to play off each other.
And that's why we highlighted how important
and how crucial it was for 100 Thieves
to actually get a proper IGL.
I mean, even Spirits on the shield,
he wasn't very pivotal.
He wasn't finding a lot of success during kickoff.
Now we're seeing him leave the charge.
So good.
Getting a lot of that control with players
immediately following up behind him.
And then as we were talking about with Kacen,
I think Kacen as well, you know,
he wasn't having the strongest start to this,
but the fact of the matter is he's nine and 10 right now.
So it goes to show
even his mentality, that he has the mentality for this.
And that's something for a newer player
that is always going to be question is,
do you have the mental resilience
when you look at the scoreboard,
you're not at the top, you had all the expectations.
But the fact of the matter is he's putting that aside,
he's focusing on what he needs to do as a player,
as a teammate.
And so far, I mean, their attacks have been absolutely flawless.
They have 10 opening kills going into their favorite
out of the 14 in the match.
I mean, it really has been a good performance.
I would say more so from the side of 100 Thieves just showed that they have the resilience of being down in the
Advances where realistically those first what couple rounds should have gone to them and they would have closed the series
Well Parker said it he said the first 20 minutes of this match hundred thieves looks like a completely different team
Then they looked like in the last 20 minutes, and I think yes, they were very close, but that is also kind of true
Right, they've clearly warmed up. I mean this is play day one for them a completely new look to this team new leadership to this team
I mean, we are seeing a very improved team in these last few rounds.
Yeah, and even in the early rounds of this match, like Lux said, I don't think we were seeing a 400 Thieves whatsoever.
I think that the first part of the rounds were really good. Like you said, they were getting the opening kills.
And yes, it was the experience of the side of Wildcard that allowed them to win rounds where they had a huge man's advantage.
But except for that, I think the game plan for 100 Thieves is sound.
I think that the map they're playing is really good. And I think we can display all of that in the attacks.
You like you said, I think everything is clicking. We have a rookie that is fighting hard. We have a great shields up
Great shields player. We have an ideal that's doing each job and we have the two core players the two backbones of Adam and of
Gomez really delivering the double digits here. I think overall we have that's it a real good team in 100
100% and just to even add on to what we're talking about
I think where they were struggling again on defense is because they are a newer team and when you're in defense
You don't necessarily have an IGL leading you, telling you what to do.
You just have the blueprint from your dry run of understanding the kens and kants
and where you should rotate, how you can rotate.
And you have to do that together in a scenario where someone's not telling you what to do.
You have to be quick on that.
But that's where we're seeing them thrive on attack
is because hot and cold is able to facilitate that.
Hot and cold is able to tell them,
okay, these are the steps that we need to get to the 1, 2, 3 to go for the execute,
which is why everyone then can come into unison and understand,
OK, hot and cold going for this, spirits going for this.
I need to do this.
And it's a reason why we saw a complete difference
from their defense into attack.
Look, far more strategically sound
than what it was on defense.
And I can only imagine with a matter of time,
and especially when you get through a series like this.
I mean, to be honest, no player wants to play a game like this.
It's grueling.
It's backing forth.
You start losing the lead.
A lot of people could actually drops at the same time.
Yeah, exactly.
And then even for 100 Thieves, you're getting this momentum.
And then if you start to lose it, and you lose it,
I mean, it's a win-win, lose-lose.
in both scenarios.
But the fact of the matter is for 100 Thieves
that they can get over this, they can get a win like this.
This is only going to set them up for even more long term
success than what we're seeing in the short term.
Yeah, and we're still waiting to get that decision on exactly
how this one is going to proceed if it's an 8-6 victory
for 100 Thieves and it is over right now,
or if we will dive back in and see potentially one,
two more rounds of this overtime thriller.
But I think it's worth talking about Kason a little bit more
here.
I mean, I'm a sucker for guys that can come in,
rookies without any T1 experience.
I'm a hater, naturally.
Of course, of course.
But, Kaysen doesn't even have any tier two experience.
It was Roller, it was some PC, T3, T4 experience,
and then here he is in the show.
Neuers was an exact replicant of that.
He never played T3, he never played T2,
I think he played something in T4,
but we picked him up because we saw
how mechanically gifted he was,
and sure enough, boom, he's an SLC major winner.
So, it goes to show, you don't necessarily need to
have to go through the trenches.
If you just have the skill, you have the backing,
have the support from the community. But obviously it's a nice step to get you into it. But I
mean again nine and ten so far it really speaks into his own mentality. Right the point is we
are seeing that guns go we are seeing that ability to play the game well and well maybe that can
be the exact thing that pushes this team over the line. We are going back into this seven six
hundred thieves. See if they can wrap this one up guys.
The admins have had their moment to discuss it and have decided that a re-host is the
best course of action.
Again, this never an easy thing to go over because I feel like what just occurred, Jesse,
is not necessarily defined in the rulebook.
Don't flay me, don't put my head on a pike.
But I just think sometimes you've got to just say, hey, I know it sucks, but let's just
start the round from scratch.
Obviously, terrible if you're a defender
because you've probably given away a lot of your strats,
but we'll see.
We'll see how it unfolds again.
I think no matter what,
it's a really tough decision to make,
but they've arrived at one.
So, 100 Deeds still with the lead.
Wildcard's still very much in this.
As we go to our potential last round,
potentially second slash penultimate round of day.
Wow, they really get, of course,
the opportunity to change the bomb sites,
change their strats around on the side of 100 Deeds.
They're often going for open area for their one and only overtime defense.
I believe it was open before as well, correctly from mom, but I think we did see this bomb site earlier from them.
Yes indeed it was, so they're not actually choosing to change much up in terms of the site.
They made a couple of off-swaps most notably, case of moving over to the Ella,
and then that leaving hot and cold open to pick up that thorn.
So no more Mira being played, and the Ella will be rotating it.
Uh, this is...
Maybe Shark was ratting before?
Hot and cold, right on electrical door, oh my goodness.
How many times do people not opt to drone that, or at least just send the drone all the
way through and then smack the door, and that's going to be quite a brutal surprise, if Hart
was able to get away with that.
They're putting a lot of trust in Hotten, you know, right?
Because if he dies and he's not able to do much getting back, he's only throwing out
what?
One razor bloom?
So far?
He's dying with full utility other than that barbed wire in the pocket that is a tremendous of bad death for a guy like him
It doesn't seem to be much of the execute at the moment. The smokes are going in
Here it's his brain just connected for a moment there
I think he might have been flashed and disoriented. Adrian gets the kill. That was quite the thing to witness Jesse
Baby stock's taking the space. He's not the shield player
we're expecting to see from Wildcard, but here he is, dropping on the Blackbeard just like he did,
back in round three. Now in round three when he played this off, he was the opening death
Parker. This time he helps to enable the opening pick, and the information continues to be good.
So Wildcard still very much in this game. The attack's continuing to look strong. Baby Shark's
not bringing a single shield, all of kickoff and the major by the way, so this is some new tech from
him. 90 seconds passed and 100 thieves still with a man disadvantage are fishing to get this
man count back, but right now they've just been forced back to site, forced back to tellers.
Kansan now hunting over towards the stairs.
Hundred thieves on the ropes.
They didn't even lead off pick in the previous round, they will not be as lucky this time.
Wildcard already a better start here and with a minute to go they can take their time to work
through this defense. They're a baby shark to Gomez. Hundred thieves will narrow that gap
back on the even footing Gomez twisting and twirling a pirouette and he's taken down as his Adam
100 teams now outnumbered two to one and it will continue to get bad for them hot and cold now
last alive in a 1v4 and he's had he dealt with by bay we will go all the way 15 rounds needed
between these two teams there's no momentum that's really been driving the bus parker it's just
really strong attacks after really strong attacks. Both of these teams feel so comfortable on the
offensive side here on Bank and we're continuing to see that in through overtime. Wildcard a
perfect little push up on the top floor. Again, you don't expect Baby Shark to be the main shield
player for Wildcard. That is almost always the role of Spiker and then maybe hands in if it's
not him, but Baby Shark got a great job of taking this space, constantly bashing spirits there on
on the Azami for the opening pick,
and then while he does go down here,
I mean, he's distracting to smoke a little bit.
He's pulling attention away from his teammates,
and I mean,
the tall angle is not a common one that you'd expect,
especially for a person who doesn't play shields too often.
So I think we can forget that one death.
They tie us up at seven,
the back and forth will have to end, Parker,
and in three minutes,
we will have a victory one way or another.
Attackers have discovered the location of a no-limit number of times. That's the ones that would be a very silly thing when we just play for ever
People are expecting a long fight between these two teams as they lose their defenses when their attacks and will still be in this matchup with
A team to tomorrow, so I hope that nobody has any plans
Chopper firebellion and cloud nine are up next cloud nine will be debuting a new look for its team
And then we'll be concluding the day with five fears versus Outlast, two of the newest teams to make it to pro play.
Outlast will be looking to immediately do better than they did during kickoff.
Five fears hoping to prove why they were NA's number one team heading into the Salt Lake City Major.
Top floor is our final location for 100D's wildcard and wildcard will have to do what they have not been able to do so far, which is win a defense, they want a single defense round back and around the block, and it was on this site.
But straining more together has been such a difficult task for them.
You saw a bit of an interesting stalk setup as well. It looked like Bay only had one reinforcement to play with, so they don't have foot holes on the stalk jump in.
They've reinforced those over, and they've put foot holes over the right side instead. Thank you, Observer, for showcasing that.
Not a push on the square side just yet coming through from 100 thieves, but if they choose to pivot, that might offer some different opportunities.
Gomez on the Cali. He doesn't have some really crazy he's looking for. Most of them are just going to be these Keyletes and Castle Barricades.
And then with the smokes, but you took their begins
First extra thermatrige will go off as well as Gomez is still out on repel spiker
No, dude
All right, well
We will see what happens there
the first game of the year.
Um. There was a there's kind
of an interesting tweet that
went out from the former player
of 100 feeds yoga after his
first game in E. M L. He said.
I just ordered a super computer.
First thing tomorrow morning
was stuttering with only 150
FPS despite spending two and a
half grand on the current PC.
Sometimes when you're in a new
environment and you're playing
your first game of the season,
maybe the maybe the setup that
quite as good as you were expecting and I think that's probably where wildcard are at tonight
Because they've been having some really difficult tech issues so far today and this one when you're on round 15 of your opening game
I mean continues to strike at just the worst moments
Yeah, I mean, I'm I'm calling an electrician
I'm calling the utility guy and maybe I'm even calling for a priest for an exorcism of that teamhouse to try and to try and get
the ghosts out of the machines here is
We got another full team disconnect for wild card. I don't know. I don't know exactly what we do at this current point in time again
It's up to the admins. I'm not familiar enough with the rulebook, but
Typically it used to be you were only allowed like one
Rehost for your team for like an act of God
You were only allowed like one rehost per team per match. I remember and I actually remember Jesse
I don't know if you recall this.
I actually got into a bit of trouble with this
because we were casting back in the Poland days,
phase versus liquid,
and they were both playing in Brazil during thunderstorms.
And there was something like six, eight, nine,
I can't say the other number,
rehosts in a single game
because they kept losing power
because of the thunderstorms.
Now, typically the rule book says you're only allowed,
I think at the time it was only like one
rehost per team, per match.
That was it.
But obviously they broke the rules for that
because what can you do?
It's thunderstorming out, right?
Yeah.
I was doing a qualifier game where I did multiple re-hosts
and one of the coaches on the other team protested
and was like, well, technically the rule books
has won per team.
And I was like, brother, we just saw phase liquid.
I have like 10 re-hosts.
The admins in NA upheld it and the team
that called for a second re-host actually ended up
losing the round and they lost the qualifier because of it.
So honestly, I don't know.
I don't know if the rule book has changed,
but I just, I don't know.
I don't know what you do here
It's a rough spot for a hundred these you ought to feel bad for them
Showing up, of course, they're showing off their new facility. They weren't playing here during kickoff
I know it's silly that the org has had for a while, but the siege team is new and
To have your first game go like this with so many start stops, especially with how well I think both teams have played
I mean, there's no doubt
It's a shame that the tech issues have been so persistent because I think the attacks in particular from both these teams have been
so well crafted from both teams. The battle of the IGLs, Spiker in hot and cold, not too long ago,
playing side by side, now going head to head in a battle of wits. It feels like both captains
have done an exceptional job at orchestrating some really good executes with or without the
man count advantage that has brought this game all the way 15 rounds deep, but if we didn't get
a finish, if we didn't get to see this final round, I mean it'd certainly be a shame.
We can only hope that we get back in quickly and that they do continue this match up, but
at some point you're right Parker, like at some point enough has to be enough and you
got to just cut some slots to the team who haven't had any tech problems tonight.
Yeah, I mean this is obviously us talking purely from a hypothetical standpoint, but
you know, competitive integrity is important to uphold, but at the end of the day, a hundred
Thieves are sort of being punished for not having tech issues before them.
So is it, you know, again, this is why I said it's a hard, I imagine it's a hard
decision to make for the admins because I can see it both ways.
I can see why you'd want to be rehosting these rounds no matter what, right?
I don't know.
Stop spot to be in, but of course our fantastic admins are working through it
as we try to find a conclusion to this game.
There is still plenty of siege to be played again. I would imagine much like yoga
I was able to upgrade his PC after the first day of eml
I imagine we will see wild card update there set up a little bit after today's issues
So this shouldn't be a problem for them going forward
But we do have back-to-back-to-back play days and sometimes the turnaround can be kind of tough
So hopefully they can get there in the end
Sounds like while the admins are working this one out. We're gonna have a break
so thanks so much for your patience as always and hopefully we'll return shortly with a decision on
what happens between hot and colds 100 thieves and spikers wildcard
I'ma keep it going till I ain't nothing
I'm breaking necks and I'm hot and I
Oh, yeah, I'll blow up if I'm running out
If I can't get down, so let's run it up
I'ma keep it going till I ain't nothing
Keep it going till I ain't nothing
of
It'll be eight seconds, I will fight again.
Good fucking comeback boys.
Well you see the reaction from Kason there, the reaction after the win declared for 100
thieves, the 8-7 win awarded by default after the second wild card disconnect in a row.
It's not the way you want to win a game, but it is a win regardless that 100 thieves will
be happy to take.
the team. I mean, the team
is really good. I mean, the
team is really good. I mean,
the team is really good.
The hot and cold is standing
by, so we'll chat with him now
after this chaotic matchup.
Hot and first of all, welcome
to 100 Thieves. You look great
in the jersey. Not the way we
necessarily wanted this to end
up. But bringing this one out,
zooming out a little bit to the
match as a whole. I mean, how
are you feeling about the
synergy with this team being a
leader on this team? What are
of the team we are, we started off very slow.
I think that's pretty obvious for everyone watching.
But I think the vibes, I mean, we never let them fall too hard.
I was kind of getting, I was getting on people's ass early on
and they kicked it into over track.
Once we got into attack, we started racking up wins.
The momentum shifted.
And then the constant re-hosts, you know,
kind of kind of sucked, especially after, you know,
two of them we got first picks.
So, but I think overall the team, the team environment's been great.
Nothing really bad to say.
Well, Hanco, congratulations on your guys' first win.
Now, I know you said this probably wasn't the best
showcasing of what you guys can replicate inside of a match,
but I do want to talk about it.
I mean, I think there is something to really take away.
Obviously, it wasn't the strongest defensive half,
but it really does show the resilience within the team.
Obviously, you have the chemistry with the other two players
on the roster.
And then to be able to have the significant bounce back
you did on attack, I think that does speak at least something
into existence that clearly you bring a lot of structure for this team that just simply wasn't
there in kickoff. I mean, I would like to say it's just me, but I don't think it's just me. I think
that obviously the boys are putting in a lot of work. New coach has been good for us and Kason.
I mean, he's just a beast. I feel like today, most rookies, you know, starting off one in five,
not him, but just the, you know, the round count. I feel like they kind of just went into their shell
and let the game just kind of take over, but he kept his comps in it. And I feel like if a rookie
is keeping his comps in it, even when, you know, you're getting shut on, that's, you can't really
ask for much more. And we just kept trying and, I mean, persevered. And that's something that also
we highlighted here on the desk. I mean, also something that you can attest to. We all were
players, you're still a player. I mean coming in for your first debut, I mean it is really important
to just understand to not look at the scoreboard, not focus on the negatives and focus on what you
can as a player and we also highlighted from the beginning, sure he wasn't finding a lot of success
but then towards the very end he's right neck and neck with everybody. So again I mean for a rookie
to come in that way, have all the expectations looking over him and to honestly meet them,
I would say he definitely met them. I think it's a really good step in the right direction for his
career. I agree. I mean, the sky is the limit for the little dude. I mean, he knows that.
I know that. That's why I wanted to join this team. And, you know, I'm just looking to get
some more dubs on the board. We'll start off with the freebie from the admins. We'll take it.
Speaking of what you're joining this team, Matt, how has it been for you? Obviously,
you're changing your gear. Coming into this new roster, you set it yourself. You have a young
rookie full of potential, you have a new coach coming in as well, and two former teammates,
a big name to present, what's a cool organization as well for you to represent, so how has it
been for you joining this team, preparing the team to maybe you know join into your vision,
join into your strats, how has it been for you? It's been it's been really nice for me, I think
towards the tail of any team you know the longer with them, I felt like the stress and just like
like kind of just pressure of not getting to where we want to just keeps adding up and
I feel like it was kind of hitting that on M80 for me.
It just, you know, the practices just felt longer than they were before and then I needed
a reset.
I think it's a blessing in disguise that I got dropped.
Maybe it is for them too, who knows.
But I think overall, yeah, it's really good.
I think another thing I realized after Kino leaving M80 is I just need a shield, like
a good shield player on my team.
Having Kino or spirits on your team is a literal cheat code.
It just makes the game so much easier to call as an ITGL.
He's great.
I love him.
Matt, thank you.
Thank you so much for your insight.
That is, as always, congrats on the win.
A weird one, but you get the 8-7 victory, and we'll see you, hopefully, more interviews
down the line.
Thank you.
I got one, guys.
See it.
Well, what a finish to this game.
It was odd, but it was a really good show.
I mean, we were talking about this backstage, Leo.
This was an impressive performance from both Wildcard
and 100 Thieves.
It is 100 T who come out and take the win,
but, you know, bright spot on the Wildcard side.
Kansan was impressive, right?
We saw a lot of the experience and the clutch potential
from them.
We did see a lot of well-rounded sees from both teams.
I mean, from the very start, if you take a look at round one
and you look at Kansan's performance,
from the very get-go. He was the main carrier for Wildcow. If it wasn't for him, honestly,
Wildcow would never have been in this position. They would not have been in overtime. It seemed
getting here as a staple player to save rounds. He gets a 4k in this round, a 2v4 by the way.
It is just amazing to see a player that has so much experience, years of experience. I
recruited this player. I actually trialed him and recruited him on E-United. Six years
down the line. He's still delivering some of the most impressive stuff ever. Like it's not only the
four kills, it's him getting the kill to server, smoking up the angle, covering the plant, and getting
a triple kill after that. And then later, like round five, he gets another triple kill, and then
once again confirms another round for wild kill, and then likes later down the road. In defense,
he has this very important gunfight against the Blackbeard, manages to kill him, and then hides
And wins the one.
And that's where the experience really shines right there.
I mean, I think other people in that scenario, they may be panicking,
they may be crouching, they try to go for the kill.
You just see Kanzin just outlining, just slowly crawling further into that desk.
And that's really where their experience shines from.
Yes, it is unfortunate for Wildcard to lose here,
but I think there is still a lot to be able to take from them at.
This was their first match. This was their showcasing.
Yak and defense be a little better, for sure, but their attacks did look good.
did look good and they were definitely down a lot of man deficits as we saw
Kanson had a big clutch we had that big round that you had a
telestrator where we can see that on their attacks great perfect defense
obviously needs a little more work but still to go without say sometimes that's
just the nature of a matchup where it really is either a super defensive
sided map or it's a super attacker side of map and today it really was an
attacker sided map. Well that attacker sided chaos was what really defined our
third matchup of the night but as we move into our fourth clash it is cloud
and Shopify Rebellion as the well
challengers of Cloud nine have to
take on the major runner ups from
Salt Lake City. Shopify Rebellion
have had a lot of pressure on their
shoulders over the first few months
of this year. Leo, they have been
attacked by the community and then
supported by it when they make the
main stage and take on Zark Zero. It
has been a roller coaster for them,
but right now it feels like they're
riding a high. I think they've been
attacked by the community for the
because when you have such big names on the roster,
when this team was first put together, think about it.
Canadian was the face of NA and the most accomplished AGL,
AGL of all time.
You look at Ambi.
Ambi has been seen by many players and many fans
as the best NA player, at least the best young player of NA.
You have spoiled as well.
So the pressure is there.
The social pressure about this team to perform,
the pressure to deliver.
And to be a runner-up in a major, it's all good and well,
but they are still chasing the title
and the pressure is still there.
I think the important note, especially in kickoff was we saw that big roster change.
We saw that big shift in the dynamics.
And SR was one of the only top teams that didn't make a change.
They wanted to believe their system.
They wanted to trust their players.
And I honestly think it was a make or break moment for them.
Had they not made playoffs, had they not even made the run that they made at SLC,
maybe we wouldn't be talking about this roster in the same way coming into this.
But fact of the matter, they believed in their system.
They made it all the way to the grand final.
Unfortunately, they did get decimated by Darkseer.
But to be fair, that had to have matchup,
if you look into that, DZ heavily outweighs that.
But it's the fact of the matter for me,
that was the first time where I really felt good about SR.
That was the first time I saw a brand new team.
They looked revitalized.
It wasn't even what we saw in the first stage
when they came in, when they absolutely went flawless
in that group stage.
They looked on a complete different level.
And I'm really hoping, coming in today,
That's the exact same sort of tenacity that they're going to bring into this match versus cloud nine
Well, I want to bring up that that and be full screen if we can one more time here because he was the man of the main stage
right we talked so much about sport about
Canadian about that dynamic at the major but and be turned into a deity he ascended to a higher plane on the main stage
21 and 9 sorry
21 and 1
Yeah was the scoreline that he dropped against G2 a jaw dropping performance unlike we've ever seen
21 KD against the best of the ML Shaku
Stomp in as well. Yeah, I like how you just casually stop. I still pin is up the shaku 21 KD
Yeah, I mean Matt. I should say doki came out in the interview after it was like I hope in map 2
We can play against SR and not just ambient
I mean not even I mean obviously the 21 kills was super impressive, but even in the twisted minds match
I mean that 4k that he got when he got flashed by blitz it was match point for twisted mines
If he didn't get that 4k
I believe it was a 4v2 in that situation or 2v4 rather if he didn't get that kill
SR would have been out of the running and a bit twisted minds in the grand finals
So I mean a lot of that really came off the back of a me
But that entire team as a whole really stepped up and ramped up their performance throughout SLC
There wasn't a single outlier obviously people give shit of Troy not being able to perform back to the matters
He isn't a player and we talk about this time and time again.
He shouldn't be at the top of the leaderboard at any given time.
But Cloud9 are one of these teams that are hoping to climb their way up the leaderboard here.
An eighth place finish over in kickoff.
They did not make the major, obviously, and they're one of the few teams here
who did make a roster change coming in.
We need to see this team rejuvenated at the very least.
Yeah, some of them my grandma would say to me,
Minyanum Minyanum Minyanum, meaning tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.
It's kind of the same thing for Cloud9 as we always hear next stage, next stage, next stage.
And it's always the exact same result.
It's very lackluster in their performance.
And you can clearly see here's the record of them coming
into the NA.
It hasn't been pretty.
Now, I don't want to doom and gloom by any means.
Obviously, there was some things that we did highlight
into their series in kickoff center.
Being on your right side, they have a new player,
Monk, being on your left.
And they also have another new player
that we all do know and love, which
is Pamba coming off of that 100 Thieves roster that
didn't find success.
But as much as I want to talk about Monk,
I'm not too familiar with him, but I can easily talk about Pamba and Pamba for me, I think
for me in this situation, it's kind of grasping at straws.
Yeah, if I look at Pamba, I'm thinking like, this is the moment of redemption, like you
said, like obviously he's failed on 100 thieves, he was dropped or I had a break after a DZ,
and now is the moment where he's like, is it the end of a proklar career?
Can he actually shine?
And two positive things for me, Monk, Young, Rookie, he's got the hunger, he's gonna bring
something new to the roster.
He needs to prove himself. And so, yes, he has some kind of pressure.
But what better way to do it than to be surrounded by players that may be not the star of the show like he used to be
on 100 days of Dark Zero. It's easier for you to shine if you don't have the star players next to you.
And so he will be given the best role. He will be given maybe the best operators for him to read 5.
He's not given the most trust.
Exactly. And I think that's two good signs, or two positive signs, as I've at least mentioned for Cloud9.
Well, we saw earlier in our first game for fun taking dark zero to the map that they won at the major hoping that that information could help them out here.
We'll see if cloud nine adopt a similar strategy here in the map bands.
SR did show a lot in Salt Lake City.
We'll see exactly what map they wanted to end up going to here.
Leo, I know you took a look at this and it looked like it's going to be border.
Good luck playing a TDM game against someone that drove 21 kills against you.
I was going to say, I mean, bank out of all maps.
We know it's a frag fest.
We know SR has players that loves to take engagements.
And for a team like Cloud9, I mean, realistically,
I don't think there's any map that they
were going to find themselves comfortably on going against
SR.
The only thing that you could maybe contribute to the side
from Cloud9 is that they did have a close game versus Wildcard
in the 6-8.
But I mean, how much are we really holding on to that
in terms of them going to a map like quarter?
Really, stick to your understanding,
like you want to throw away the struts,
You want to bring it down to a ranked game in a B1 against some team that you should never hope to take down?
Okay, I can understand that game plan realistically. You're playing against boys. You're playing against rexen. You're playing against ambi
Canadian I mean mechanically
Literally, you've got four out of five of the best players in the name like I'm not sure I back that game plan
But hey, who knows I'm here to get surprised. I'm here to get entertained. I've been entertained so far in a real
You know what? Maybe, maybe, maybe what you know.
It's the only thing they really have right on their shoulders right now.
Is that element of surprise?
They won one game. It was against Outlast.
They take on the second place team at the major.
What are they supposed to do?
I was going to say, I think best case scenario in any of these situations is that it is at the best of one.
And what we've seen, I mean, we've seen crazy things happen.
I mean, we saw cruelty beat at MAD a couple stages back.
I mean, it's not to say that it can't be done.
If you show up on that day and the other team is struggling, you can get that win.
But do I think that's going to happen here today?
No.
I love that.
I love that.
That's really perfect.
That is exactly where we'll end it as we get ready for this one.
Fair warning, Parker and Jesse.
I've got a sneak peek at what the lobby looks like.
None of the Cloud9 names make any sense.
I'm so sorry.
Good luck.
Just another day?
Just another day?
Yeah, I mean, what more do you say?
This is players decide to play with silly names and they're not even remotely close to what their real names are
So we'll see how this shapes up as you know
The people think that the rebellion are gonna walk away with this one pretty quickly
It might not even matter what their names are ends up being a quick one. We'll see Jesse. What are your expectations for this match?
Parker I'm expecting a fun game
You know, there's no doubt F star has shown a lot more impressive stuff in cloud nine half over the last couple of years
But for the first time ever we got brother versus brother in the North America League
It's a huge day in the Medina household as surf and center go head to head for the first time in their pro careers
Center, of course making his rookie debut back during kickoff, but they were not in the same
Group as shopfire rebellions. They didn't actually get to play against one another
when centers playing a lot since the surf come in and walk in and be in his
Facecam during the matches. I don't think we'll see that here in this game
But no doubt there'll be some funner on the dinner table tonight
I don't even know who the C9 players are like I know monk. I know monk's name, but
I
Well, I guess we're good we're gonna try to have fun with this one. I suppose I
I
Think all the names on shop of our rebellion were normal
Shop for our belly and a bit around the block a couple of times
They don't know no no no don't excuse this club nine's players have been around the block a long time to they should know better
But I guess you know
Porta Pounder and Utopia are making their debuts at this point
Lovely, I mean there is there is
bungalow later on a star so they're not even they're not even you can't even
compliment a star on that one okay I should be serious it is a big nation
surf and center are playing themselves as brothers like they're fine and playing
each other and neither of them are competing under their actual names it
robs us of an actual good opportunity to talk about this so bungalow later is
Um, Zootopia is apparently Pambazoo, Tung Tung is Eddie, Center is a Torta Pounder, and I guess Uzi is the guy on the left who's name I do not want to say.
So, um, yeah, we'll get started here with round number one.
So
Well at the desk broke it down. I mean border can be hell on a cell and sometimes that is an advantageous
Position for the underdogs, but you're going up against as far these guys are nasty when it comes down to the gunplay
So you're gonna have to be clean East is going to be
The Azami playing here behind the Kiba barrier. This will be Uzi who's trying to lock this one down
Steve's Canadian back behind him and Rex will toss in the Capitao Bolt, but he is immediately caught by Amby's.
He tries to rotate down those stairs. A clean finish on that East Stairs position.
Starts things off right for the rebellion.
That's doozy, right? I'm assuming that is the... okay.
Yes, that's correct.
Chat, I want to give you a fair warning. We are professionals, but when over half of the lobby, or exactly half of the lobby, has completely different names,
Do try to give us a little bit of credit here because this is going to be really quite challenging to do this.
I think that's Surf killing his brother, I imagine so.
Yes.
And that's Eddie?
Yes.
Surf?
Yeah.
Correct.
So a couple of trades back both ways, and the space is I think so good for Shopfire Rebellion.
We got pings on this security player. This is gonna be Monk making his pro league debut and hits a beauty shot straight on the recsnet, okay?
S.R.s really hitting their shots. It's all up to Tong Tong. He gets a dealt with and S.R. takes round number one
Unfortunately not able to really play together there cloud nine
They did a very standard hold on that top floor of border making sure that they can hold on to east end to break room
but Shopify rebellion is just another day at the office for them.
I really like the coordination with Canadian on the Monty finding that space for his teammates.
He saw the cap of towel bolts. You see the coordination.
Surf ends up getting in there as you mentioned to take down his brother in the very first round that they play up against one another.
So nice to see that little family rivalry coming true, but yeah, Shopify rebellion.
We expect them to be dominant here on the attacking half and so far through one round. That is the case.
I'm gonna be honest with you Jesse didn't really get a good chance to deal with the
Cotton thrust of that round because I was too busy trying to figure out who the hell each person was on their name
So I mean
It's gonna take it's gonna take a couple rounds for us to get this right
but
I mean when you look at these two teams and you look at what happened during kickoff
Shopify rebellion were a bit of a weaker team during kickoff
I think that's pretty fair to say, they were the weakest team in North America, they entered through the phase one, the play-in phase, and they ended up being one of the four teams ultimately to qualify, and I mean each of the four regions had their teams playing,
or at least five regions I suppose at this point, because CML had three of the four teams competing.
So you've got Shopify Rebellion, who are a weaker team compared to some of their contemporaries, but as that tournament went on, they started to improve.
improved and now we're at a point where as the desk said many many times you've
got too many weapons on the side of rebellion and they need to be a top
14 with this roster there is no ifs ands or buts about that.
Ryne obviously picking up Pambazoo picking up Monk they're going to take some time to
figure out how to play as a unit particularly Pambazoo playing with some
players that maybe he doesn't have a ton of experience with here so you'll be a
a little bit cautious and patient with this C9 team.
I donated the highest hopes for them
in their first couple games,
especially since their first match,
they have to play against the team
that finished second after the major.
Yeah, well, it's a big change for Pamba Zoo
in particular, right, Parker?
Because he's coming into this younger team.
I had a chat with Vivid, the coach of C9,
and I asked them what their roles.
It's only Pamba and I yelling this team,
so they've got a little bit more roles changing up.
He gets the opening frag,
and this one finds his former IGL of Canadian
on the opening frag with the Blitz,
but immediately does get traded back.
So we'll have to see how he adapts to this new role.
Now we've got a nice little fright to come through here
between Surf and Eddie.
Opens things up continuously and Monk will explode
the dope call, okay.
We're getting goofy.
Was the first one we've seen in the NA League, Jesse.
So I mean, hey, that's pretty good.
Two remain for Cloud9, Rebellion still with three upright
at this point in time.
You saw the heroics that Ambideed at Salt Lake City.
I feel like there is a period of time where you could literally just tweet Ambi's name
and the thing that's gone in the 300 likes on Twitter.
So I mean the man really did eat his Arbys and play very effectively.
He's now got Rex and Surf with him to try and contend with these two remaining players
of Cloud9.
They've got plenty of time to work with on the side of Rebellion 2.
They've got just a little bit over a minute left and I mean C9 have two players, one of
whom is on lower HP.
And the answer also both on low HP
Well, Dr. Eisen cross their T easier Jesse as they look for an execute and be holding the diffuse kit and nervous
What Andy with the fuser on one HP they did drone out some of the thorn traps
That's gonna be your biggest worry with that one HP diffuser. So hopefully SR will be ready for it
It's gonna be a very late round push of course as it comes through
So they've got to be clean to make sure they're not running into any traps
They need to know these last couple positions on defenders one is workshop, which they've just spotted out here
and they shouldn't open the thorn in the bathroom as well.
Ambi will now attempt the defuse plant.
Rexon and Cerf will watch for coverage.
C9 will attempt to get back to the bomb sites
and they will lose both of their engagements
pretty quickly on SR, off to a hot 2-0 start.
Very clean in the execute there.
Again, it's not all sunshine and rainbows for the rebellion.
Canadian is the opening death.
It's never something you like to see,
but what's important is that the trade was there so perfectly, right?
It's alright if Canadian's going down
because the trade is immediately there and even though you lose your shield, that's a big spacemaker,
we saw everybody come alive on the side of SR. Surf had another really important kill in the
midst of that top floor clear. The Dohka be menaced from Spoyt was able to claim a life as well and
when they had Batman advantage and they knew those last couple position from C9, leave it to
Canadian to call for a perfect late round execute. We saw how many times in wildcard versus 100
feeds it come down to the last 30 seconds and the better attacking IGL being the one to come out
on top and secure that that victory when they needed for their team.
I think we saw that again from SR in that previous round.
You know, if we're having a, you know, if we're having a tech issue here,
are we just on player cams for a little bit longer?
Sure, we'll be getting back into it very shortly.
Oh, I was asking you. I'm assuming I'm not in the game.
unfortunately Parker I have simply the same access as you. Well it's strange
because didn't you call some things it looks like okay it looks like we have a
tactical timeout called by by cloud nine I mean obviously never a good thing for
cloud nine to call a tactical timeout two rounds in no team is gonna want to
call a timeout two rounds in unless there's serious cause for concern I
mean there cloud nine was not the strongest team in North America during
kickoff so there was plenty of opportunity for them to improve but
there's a lot of long faces already and you were only six minutes into this
match you have to change those vibes pretty quickly or else I mean you've
already got your hands full going up against a good team you got to make
sure vibes are high so maybe it's a maybe it's a strategic timeout just here
maybe it's more for emotions yeah I think you can your head you know on
straight a little bit here in this game so far have most players getting active
at least with a couple of kills I think monk has actually been very good for
So far the shots that we've seen him hit has been really really clean
One of his two deaths coming from the joke of the call after he took damage early
I mean that's unfortunate, but I think when monk has been called upon to hit some nasty shots
He's been quite good. So that's probably the biggest bright spot coming through from cloud nine for these first few rounds
I had a quick chat with him the other day as well
Just ask him about his history because he isn't a name that most people will be familiar with like they will have cases
But he started playing siege back in Operation Health, he switched to PC almost exactly a year ago,
made T2 back in September and has been slowly grinding his way back up.
I think it's kind of a surprise to people how quickly he has been pulled into this tier one position alongside Cloud9,
but two rounds deep and I've been impressed he's had some really good shots today.
Absolutely.
I'm the one person that I'm most familiar with too and I know laxings said this almost word for word is his Pambuzik, right?
And I mean, for somebody like Pambazoo, I know that him being dropped from that 100 Thieves roster kind of caught some people by surprise.
We actually did spend some time talking about this during the 100 Thieves match that happened before this.
But, I think it was Mute actually on his co-stream, kind of spilled the proverbial tea and just said that sometimes Pambazoo could have a bad attitude and be a hard teammate to work with.
Vibes are important, sometimes players get moved off of teams not because of skill, but because of attitude and how easily they get along.
SR, this is not really about vibes at this point, but Jesse, they have found a way into
the building and immediately Rexon gets handled.
He's the first casualty.
He goes down at the hands of Pambazoo, I believe.
Not ideal to lose your main hard breacher and there's no follow-up hardboots, but Ambi
is there to get him too very quickly.
Look at that twitchiness!
He finds a third from the same position.
Monk will find two, shutting Ambi and Canadian down.
The damage has been done.
S.R.'s now reduced to just Spoit who's outside of the building.
Oh my my, how bad that went for the rebellion so quickly.
Everything falling apart, it felt like Ambu was gonna carry it on his back,
but now he's forced Spoit into a 1v2.
Already forced the bomb site, knocking on this door,
but both defenders have played up above Parker.
Spoit does not want to waste any time,
because he already flashes himself,
comes right back down through the floor, not what he was hoping for.
We can start to play around and fish for these kills.
so much time still on the clock, nothing above him here, so go for the plant.
Shut down by...
Uzi, I think.
C9 wins the round relatively easily.
Spoi was kind of left out, banged to dry there.
There was really much that he could do.
Immediate translation from the time out, though, into success.
That's got to bode well for Cloud9 and be a bit of a motivating factor.
Yeah, I mean, I think you see the aggression,
I think you see the clove-hud-ence coming through after that tax time out, Parker.
It's an early move from Pamba that gets them off of that opening pick, and then it's Monk
who finally gets aggressive and shuts down, uh, shuts down Ambii down below, but you
saw a player after player after player throwing their bodies at Ambii, trying to get that
trade, trying to shut him down, and that is rarely a good strategy up against what is
mechanically maybe the best player inside of North America.
The one person who leads the season globally in frags, enters this game with 344, I believe
a 350 after this round as he hits the 6k, but all in all, it just feels like they're
willing to throw their bodies at the problems.
They're willing to go aggressive and try to make these kills back, try to get this man
count back in towards their favor, and it really did work out for them there.
So, playing with confidence, playing with some aggression, trusting in your own gun
skill, maybe that's going to be the key that pushes Cloud9 deep into this match.
One thing I do want to note about Ambi is that in that position where he was standing,
Those were not necessarily isolated engagements.
It's just Ambi's sensitivity is so insanely high that he can do a 180 flick without even
breaking a sweat.
Like usually you're not able to walk through a doorway, kill one person, immediately do
a 180 kill the other, right?
Like that's why crossfires trade, that's why they're so strong.
Ambi literally was flicking almost 180 degrees to get all three of those kills back and forth
and back.
So I can understand why C9 thought, oh yeah, we're gonna kill two people and there's no
problem whatsoever.
And then both of them die to the most improbable of gunfights.
And I mean, Ambie dropped about 21 kills against G2 in the quarterfinals of Salt Lake
City doing very similar things.
So Cloud9's a decent team.
G2 are inarguably a better team when it comes to global rankings.
If Ambie can do that against one of the best teams in the world, cool boy, and he's got
six kills through three completed rounds.
Obviously those numbers can be a little bit below his own standards, but still a really strong start for him if ambi has a life game
He can easily drag this team across the finish line
So still a bit too early to turn our eyes towards other players of SR
But I mean circuit three kills point with two kills things are okay. I suppose for the score line
Yeah, I mean I think that cloud nine it's kind of a relief ambi hits a life round
And you're still able to win it out close things down cloud nine should be feeling confident after that previous one
So if they can string another one tie things back up at two all of a sudden we got a game on our hands lots of information being
Served up around this defense cloud nine. They've got the pulse being brought out by center
So they're gonna have a bit of info as to what this rebellion push looks like and you can see it already
a couple players
Maybe it's gonna be Pamba maybe it's gonna be Eddie
but if somebody wants to get aggressive and try to make some kind of a
Fast move to disrupt this SR push before it begins then that could be once again
the start of the final domino
Let's proceed fully!
For the first Domino.
Wow, but the start of the train that tilts the final Domino, I should say.
And then he's a fire.
Okay, I understand.
I understand.
It was clunky on my end, I'll work on that.
No, but that's okay.
You know, I just, I, one day, Domino's will make it to Alberta, you know, and I hope
you get a chance to use them yourself.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm just, I'm really here for you.
Maybe I'll bring some to your, to your wedding, by the way.
Uh, Pambazoo now on the run in his position, being abused by that logic bomb, hunted down.
It looks like another will go over towards Monk 2, as out go those ROU projectors.
That Surf trying to conceal the bomb site, C9 with two kills, Brexit answers that one right back,
but the damage, like we said in the previous rounds, already been done.
Spoint Namby in the grave early is not great.
Spoint, in fact, has been a bit of a lightning rod on the Shopify Rebellion team.
his usage changed in Salt Lake City and he was far more of a forbiddable threat.
It hasn't really been the case here so far on boarder.
Largely been using ambi as the main point of this speeder, so I don't know if things will
change up or not, but rebellion on the ropes down by one player with just a little over a minute to go.
You can see the damage that's been done. Three players on C9 down exactly 40 damage.
Two of them from a dokeby call as they will just choose to let their phone explode.
That's how most pro players are responding to the dokeby.
they frankly just let the phone blow up and then you can't get called anymore.
They're happy to eat that little bit of damage in a headshot focused game,
so that's going to be how it's E9 are choosing to defend this.
Very close to the bomb site, but hard walls are separating these players.
Now with the hard breach coming through, Rexxon has an angle into sight,
but they're really focused on Pambazoo.
Canadian not in any position to do any damage here.
This is something again that the desk talked about.
I mean obviously there's been a lot of people trying to carry water for Canadians KD
over the kickoff and event we just witnessed, but I mean when he's fully extended his Monty,
he is not risking anything for an engagement. He's relying on Rexon and Surf to cover him.
Canadian attempted it. There goes one of those hard breach canisters. Canadian shot.
I don't know where this is coming from. It seems to catch SR by surprise. Everything
exploding in front of their eyes and Cloud9 is tied up the game just like that.
So exactly where it came from Parker that was usually down below the bomb site pulls out the Deagle
He's playing inside of bathroom. He's got the vert angle down below
Which is the one position that shopfire belly and were not anticipating that they weren't ready for
It's great if you've got Canadian able to get in deep and stop those horizontal angles
But the vert play was something that just couldn't respond to because they didn't have the players for it
They lost both of their entry fraggers early in this matchup
Thanks to some really nice play by Eddie. So without that aggression, it just didn't feel like they were having the opportunity to get that plant down.
Perfectly played again by the Azami in that round.
And the Spirits were high for Cloud9, now 2 apiece on board.
It's been a wild ride so far. You know, I remember back when we used to talk about Oregon quite a bit.
You'd always say you know it's the map where good teams go to die
I feel like border has taken over that position at this point in time
I don't know if you would agree with that. Yeah, I'd say so. I think so too
I just think it's a chaotic map where everything can happen strategy be damned and there are a lot of times where
If somebody on defense does something a bit unpredictable they jump out of a window
They break a particular floor or a window or a board or something like that
And they get an early pick, you know your whole strategy kind of goes belly up
And because of that you need to make adaptations. The teams that are really good at adapting and kind of living in the moment
tend to do really well on this map because it can be hard to stick to the plan.
And if you talk to some of the pro coaches, they will openly tell you that.
And that's why there are teams that are not particularly comfortable going to border on big moments or in big matchups.
For a best of one, it's gonna be a craft shoot on this map.
Most best of ones are kind of a coin flip depending on if players load in or who had, you know, a good sleep, etc.
and maybe they're playing ranked and tweeting till 3.45 in the morning yesterday, but I mean,
for Cloud9, I do have to think this is a pretty decent map. You'll be able to nullify a lot of
the advantages that the Rebellion have over you. Information is flowing for SR. You see how good
the drones are. They know about monks position inside of security a couple of times now. He's
been caught on a drone spotting the solace as well, so here comes the line charge to try to
force themselves in for a fit. No aggressive swings being given by Cloud9 though, so Shopify,
Rebellion are left waiting for these frags. Finally they take down Spoyth. That's not the engagement
you were hoping to see if you're a rebellion fan, but one comes back as Surf is able to take down the oryx.
An answer straight back as Surf will get put in the grave, so man advantage leads Cloud9.
There was some really good early pressure from the rebellion, but it just keeps getting worse. Now Rexon will fall at the Pambazoo.
And it just feels like Cloud9 have done a really good job of trading things out even when they don't go their way
There's some real struggles with SR getting into the building here. Now Canadians got a gun in hand
He's not gonna be hiding behind that shield any longer
So this is where the captain needs to come up big, but I mean it's a death drop plenty of people lose that engagement
There was no chance whatsoever
It looks like center got that final kill and Cloud9 will take the lead things falling apart for this SR team getting into the building
They were very confident through rounds one and two, Jesse.
Immediately, Cloud9 slaps that timeout button.
Things have been working so well in their favor
since three uncontested rounds.
Yeah, it feels like we're starting
to get into a dangerous scenario for Shopify Rebellion.
The thing about this team and long-term fans
will know exactly what I mean is it
feels like nothing ever comes easy for Shopify Rebellion.
It feels like no matter what, even against teams
that they should be handily beating,
things might go 15 rounds.
they're usually able to get the job done in the end, but this is a team that maybe sometimes play a little bit to their opponents that seem to
Steamroll games very often, just like their consistency with making deep runs and being one of the best teams in the world
Second best team in the world technically the only look at Salt Lake City's results
And you know much to the chagrin alleo North America the undisputed best Ranger in the world at the present moment
We're gonna take this, we're gonna hold onto it for a little bit of time, let us enjoy it as much as possible.
We got three months at least.
At least. I mean, if anybody watches my casting, especially North American fans, you know that I actually take a lot of joy in dumping on North America when it's important.
It's great fun, but it's not how I actually feel. It's all part of the game. It's part of the... part of content, I suppose.
Like choosing the name of the house Utopia, for example, I'm sure that's for the content as well at this point in time.
Final round of the first half, Jesse Rebellion won both of their rounds at the very start of this map
and have been empty-handed since then, and not just empty-handed, but they have just looked downright bad.
Nobody able to match C9 through these last two to even three rounds if you want to go back that far.
Yeah, I mean we go back to the one site that C9 were able to win the first time around too,
So no longer having to fix the previous mistakes. They're going back towards Ben's workshop where they've got the dub back at round number three
That started this trend of C9 winning round after round and that was a quite aggressive round from C9
That was where everybody threw their bodies towards Andy and eventually
Monk was able to cure that frag. This time it's a little bit slower
That's our fake in this East control on their inside of offices, but plenty of positions still to clear
Oh, they're shooting from below? It was. I think it was the Razor Moon that got the first one, but I'm
reasonably certain it was the Kaede who got the second. A rough go of the Kaede now sits at zero
and six. I'm, I think that's center, so he is so far not able to find any kills, but really huge
value shutting down that wall from being opened up by Andy.
I don't know if it's good enough that I had to trade a kill for it.
I think I'd rather be in a 5v4, but in any case, you know, it's worth something.
You can hold onto that top floor a little bit longer.
It's mostly been vacated, with the exception here of the warden.
That's what the gunfights coming through from Andy, trying to get this frags.
You'll be equalized things, get that number advantage, and here we go, Canadian actually
secures the kill.
Monk is not done yet though, Parker.
guy has been insane in his pro debut. Incredible debut for the only person on cloud 9 actually
using his real in-game name and he is aura farming right now. He understood the mission,
spawn in with your real name so all of the kills get attributed to the right person.
Eight kills against Shopify Rebellion when it sure looked like ambi was going to have a hero
game yet again. Canadian will ride out the delkabee for the remaining 30 seconds as
There goes yet another logic bomb.
Uzi now on the run down below, under fire.
UMP in hand as Canadian finds an opening
to get the diffuse kit down.
Monk will take the upstairs portion,
run right into Ambien, lose the engagement.
Uzi will lose it as Canadian picks up two,
and both of these teams tied up through six.
I mean, I like I said, I wasn't too familiar with what monk was going to bring to the table,
Honestly, he's being aggressive and I can I wasn't familiar with your game. Yeah, I wasn't familiar with your game
Monk, and I apologize but back to the matter is he is bringing the fight to them
He's clearly not scared to take gunfights. He's taking control of some of the rounds
He's also taking map control and holding the position
Which I think is important really speaks into how well of a player is but again then you have to look on the other side of
The coin and ambi. I mean ambi has been lights out so far
I mean both of these two have been punching at each other punching at their teammates
and landing their shots pretty aggressively,
but we have that one clip from Ambi.
I mean, I think we all kind of were in awe.
This is an Ambi moment.
It was the 3K underneath Metal Stairs inside, blew that.
Honestly, if there was gonna be one person
that was gonna shut down Ambi, it was going to be Monk.
He's got a gift for these moments, right?
Like, honestly, I just want to re-watch that moment from Ambi.
Absolutely insane. Like, he's got Nuk, and he gets, like,
some of these. The only thing that he's able to do
that I don't think I've seen a lot of pro players do
is that ability to be able to like spray down and then flick, mid spray and get all of the kills that he needs.
Like, instant deke has a headshot, prefire is here, and then he's ready just flicking around and boom, look another one.
I mean, fix the way the thing's back on him.
Hang on, of course Muck is gonna want to be the one to shut him down.
I mean, I'm starting to think Ambia at this point is just really playing with walls.
I mean, some of the stuff that he's able to pull off is pre-fires, where he places his crosshair half the time.
I mean, he really is a miracle.
So focusing back to the discussion on the dynamics here.
We criticized the game plan and we said, okay, it makes sense in their head.
They don't think they can take down a big team like this if they're going on a more traditional map
and where a lot of strategy depth is going to happen.
So they go for a TDM match.
Now, what's that this one again?
Yeah, exactly, which is always going to favor them when they're in defense
because they can go super aggressive.
Who's the player who's doing that monk?
What is he playing?
Thorne all the time.
And all he's doing is going and running around the map on the other ages
and making sure that getting in the map is a struggle.
Cool. That's great.
Gameplan works. You are 3-3. What do you do in attack?
Nobody. Realistically, what do you do in attack?
I mean, you're gonna have to bring shields to get into the building,
or you're gonna have to immediately take gunfights from the second you enter break,
the second you get into Top East.
Or it's gonna be chaos, it's gonna be rushes.
Anyway, I'm thinking it's gonna be unpredictable.
That's what they should aim for,
because realistically, they cannot kill a team like Shopee Fireball,
and they cannot take them down with playing traditional.
Well, it's clear that firepower from both of these teams
is on full display right now on border.
We've had a number of debuts so far today for fans of KCM, you have to see him in action
with 100 debuts earlier on.
There will be no debuts from this point forward as our final matchup of the day is the Five
Fears roster who made no changes after Salt Lake City and Outlast who also will be coming
back in with that same roster that we saw that frankly they will need to be
better than they were during kickoff. Jesse they were far and away the weakest
team in North America. They did get promoted to tier one and admittedly
there wasn't a lot of time for them to be able to settle their nerves down so
against a team like Five Fears there's a hope that they're able to find some
serious improvement here but you'll know the names and be familiar with them
when you see them play. We've got to get through C9 and rebellion first though and of course
the first half no closer to the conclusion than when it started at 0-0.
Canadian on the clash for their very first defense, he's trying to be slick with it.
He hasn't played clash on the top floor of border since April 22nd, so before the Major,
this is probably not something that Cloud9 will be expecting for Canadian to bring out.
Usually he's on the smoke on this East Stairs position.
Sometimes you'll see like a Lamai or something, so this is going to be something that you have to
Find different ways to work around likely a prediction of the shields being brought
You don't want to showcase that you're bringing the class because that'll often
dissuade teams from being bring operators like the Blackbeard
But now if you're plan was to use this GB to get into a control and to start taking space inside the map
Well, it's gonna be way more difficult
Down goes hand being that's the very first kill C9
Bringing the fury right into the laps of the rebellion this boy gets two of his own
He's shut down and now it goes back to a 2v2 all of that action occurring in the blink of an eye
What did we say about border things can happen so unpredictable as be so unpredictable and I mean when that
Unpredictability arrives and six players all dying this fan of 10 seconds. What do you really do?
How do you respond? You just got to be in a flow state
Two remain for C9, two remain for SR, half the round to go, this is anybody's game.
Man, I told you the Shield were gonna struggle with Canadian on the clash, but nobody told
Centre a triple to make that entry possible.
Canadian not able to give really any value, but his key will be exposed.
That's gonna be Surf removing his brother on the other side of things and leaving just this lion
and now a 1v2 up against the clash.
This should be next unwinnable.
He's looking for surf in the long angle.
60 seconds to recover this diffuse kit and give it his best shot.
This is a tough one.
His position will be given away the moment that he goes near those beepers as well.
So even if he hadn't shot that 417, then they'll know exactly where he's coming from.
He's gonna go for pre-fires, right?
If you know the common spots, aim in those positions.
I hope that somebody peeks and that you just time it really effectively.
So dragging the round out though, as it's Canadian to get another pick.
A big, fragging game for Canadians so far as SR wins their very first defense.
Yeah, it maybe struggles a little bit with his teammates all going down around each,
but it's totally fine. They back up, they play that 2v2 really nicely.
The trade game from Shopify Rebellion has been really clean today,
and I think that continues here in onto the defense.
They've tried to play quite aggro with Canadian over on East Stairs, I mean you saw the positioning from Ambi early on, even the positioning from Rexon,
try to get a bit more of that space to contest a little bit more aggressively up versus Cloud9.
Funnily, a lot of kills straight into center, but at the end it just didn't quite matter in the 2v2, so really good from Cloud9 to try to outpace them,
but SR better in that first defense pool to collapse around to their shield player and then eventually win the low man down.
Again a scramble though to start this off all that killing happened in what a minute 45 still left on the clock, so
Unpredictability is the name of the game of this map if you see teams that are jumping out of windows fighting you through barricades
We've seen windows get prepped a number of times already here on board
You have to be ready for it. You have to be prepared. We saw teams taking chances on cafe earlier today
We saw jump outs on bank. We are in a very forward aggressive meta for a lot of these teams.
They do not want to play technical defense. You know, I heard somebody once referred to it around the time when W7M popularized how aggressive they played on defense.
Somebody said it's like playing offense on defense. And I mean, why not? Especially on a map like this.
If you sit in border and you are not active, there are just too many tools, especially with Intel being the name of the game where you will get punished very quickly.
You have to be active.
Yeah.
Well, here's the opportunity now for C9 to answer.
The top four bombsite locked for the next two, so they've got to go down below in its
events workshop for the selection.
And they didn't stick on the clash, kind of odd to see him here, but again, a lot of his
primer operators, like Smoke and even from time to time, Rare Occasions, the Azami, will
be removed, so he's kind of forced to adapt and bring some different tools.
playing kind of in a similar position inside this hallway on the top floor.
He's got some players with him, everybody on SR actually playing here on the top floor.
So confident that the revert will be good enough to deny this plant.
And we start off strong, it's start for the opening.
And a trade back immediately.
S-Fever coming out ahead in another panc.
This time from SPOINT.
And the shield now over by Arsala and it's over.
The King of Sweden suddenly out of nowhere gets too big.
Look at him or a farming in Canadians webcam.
Another good round from Shopify Rebellion.
This will be one of the last play days, by the way, that Rexon plays in California before he joins the rest of the team in Toronto.
Or at least joins spoiling Canadian in Toronto as far as we can tell.
But two big rounds from Shopify Rebellion.
This will make it three in a row now.
These teams heavily streaking. We are not seeing a back and forth.
We are seeing teams going on long runs here and that obviously benefits Shopify Rebellion now as they're helping to run away with the lead.
Yeah, I think the side swap has really helped out SR in the second half, Marker.
It just feels like on the attack C9 they're unable to coordinate the same way that SR ruins their offices where
often you see the rebellion able to isolate some picks, they will be able to find a couple Cloud9 players when C9 were playing defense.
But now that we've swapped it just feels like there's always somebody next to somebody else on the side of SR right there playing so well together
And even in that last shot I mean spoits playing inside security
He gets a huge triple kill but part of the reason how he's able to get that triple kill is that a lot of the attackers are focused on the player
And lockers are focused on some players over towards break like they're not all looking spoits direction
By the time they are looking his direction
Well, he's already got a couple of kills and he hits some beautiful headshots to close things out
So she was credit to SPOIC, but Cloud9 have been struggling a little bit to isolate these picks
And that's too partly just how good SR are on these aggressive roams
They're playing together on these top floor position making it so there's no real couch for C9 to exploit
I'm gonna say something that Justin you've never said in your life
There's two sides of siege so because of that the way you attack and the way you defend will obviously change
I know that you're just learning about this game, and you don't frequently say that yourself
Thanks, so I suppose it's you're very welcome. It's a good time for you to learn rebellion obviously looking very confident here on
Their defenses and when we talk about border being a relatively good map for the defenders
It doesn't all work
I think border is statistically a defender sided map as hold on a second
We're 45 seconds in action, and they're just saying to kill each other again. We love our games of border for that unpredictability
Oh my goodness the blitz almost taking care of as the nitrous cell gets tossed out
Canadians sitting at three and four make that four and four as he gets a nice
cross tucked into Lobby. He's got an easy retreat over to the B-Bron site but
Mark might find him turned the other way. Sure does! Rexon will need to clutch out
now against three players on C9. It's got a good read on the top floor player.
Harassed by Dokobit. Harassed by Lyon. His position known. Diffuse kit not
planted yet by Zootopia still holding it. There we go. The snake getting the
piece gets the halfway point. Rexon looking for a window and speaking of a
window that was where Eddie was playing off of but Rexon has impunity for the
time being. He'll go for the drop. Eddie missing his opportunity. Rexon harassed
by the phone call. Harassed by just about everything and it's tongue tongue
with the final kill. C9 will break the Shopify rebellion streak. Eddie's
having a hell of a game here Parker. Some really high impact frags and
And also that doka be call, making it just a nightmare for Wrexen to try to clutch up
into 1v3.
Really before that, the trade game, I thought was favoring the rebellion.
It felt like there was always somebody that was maybe being caught off guard, like the
trade game was going to be good for SR.
But who else but Monk was the guy who got himself into the bomb site.
Kind of shocked to see him so deep so quickly, but a lot of the focus was over towards Customs,
was over towards security, that's where those first couple of frags went down.
ended up being that ace in the hole that got them that space. They've got the snake intel,
that's how they find Ambi, but it's the vert play up above from Spoight, which trades that first
kill, so you're kind of seeing the limitations of Snake there. They had good information,
they're not able to find the player up above though. Eventually, Pamba does get that frag back,
and again, the trade game is good enough that C9 ended up with a man advantage, but
very close in a lot of these rounds, and the scoreline remains tight as well.
Well, if the history of this matchup is any indication, Cloud9 is not going to drop this
next round again.
These teams always winning back to background, so that means we'll have a tie game and we
will go the distance.
We're a touch behind schedule, largely because of how long that 100 Thieves wild card game
ended up going and it did end in very bizarre and unprecedented fashion because I know we've
had games that have ended like that before in the history of our e-sport they just don't come as
often as you know you'd expect then it is definitely a storyline a very unpredictable game between
two really evenly matched teams and you know i quite enjoy watching that hundred thieves wildcard
series it just full of some really genuinely good rainbow six just not a lot of justy is just not
a lot of pop-off moments sure people to explode and get excited about so far you can't say the same
about the C9 Rebellion matchup. There have been so many dynamite moments where you can
just yell and cheer and I'm expecting more of that, irrespective of how many more rounds
we have to go.
While you're right Parker, the streaks would dictate that Cloud9 are now going to be able
to string a few rounds together, but it's not going to be easy. It's hacking back onto
the top floor of Border. Clash gets banned out so Canadians are going to have to change
ops once again. He is still playing towards his East airs position. Now he's on the Wamai
So falling back along his operator counts his wall gets opened and she becomes even more tricky to play
She's kind of got to step up and take a gunfight for Canadian against this young team on cloud 9. This could be tight
I've touched out to make for a lot of people
I don't even Canadians saw that bullet and frankly is
An interesting play for him to hold that angle
He gets absolutely flattened C9 will pick up two very fast kills on Ambien Canadian after Ambien went on that incredible run
I believe he was six and one, Jesse.
If you want to fact check me on that,
he's gone two and six since then.
And he has fallen off of a cliff.
Boy, has been the big bad for Rebellion.
You're going to need even larger contribution for him here,
as it's just him and Surf remaining as four players
from Cloud9.
Nobody remains from SR.
Cloud9 sweeps through the defense,
and they've won back-to-back rounds to tie the game.
I honestly really like how Cloud9 have approached
just attacking half as a whole Parker.
They've really focused in their operator bands
to make East Stairs as easy as possible to take control of.
They banned out the Smoke and the Azami,
the two best ops in the game for holding East Stairs.
And then Canadian, who had been trying to hold it
on the clash, well, that gets banned out
after round nine as well.
So at every opportunity, Cloud9 are trying
to make this East Stairs push a little bit easier
for themselves.
They do another great East push there,
where they get the opening pick onto Canadian
from a beautiful shot thanks to Pambazoo.
Another early pick in on to ambi and it just feels like if they can win the
East Stairs, if they can win that first duel on the attack, then they've got the
man advantage. Then they've set themselves up in a strong enough position that they
can snowball themselves into more and more rounds. Super the head coach of the
Rebellion will call attack timeout here and try to get the team back on track
in an opening game that was supposed to be easy for SR that has gone quickly
sideways. Yeah, I mean if you look at the and again
I'll stop my song before I finish what I'm going to say and say that there's a reason why we play these games in the server and not on paper.
But if you simply look at SR and Cloud9's pedigree, the potential for these teams and their kickoff and SLC results, of course, obviously there's no SLC results for Cloud9,
this should have been a relatively easy match for the Rebellion, at least on paper.
But the way that this series is unfolding has been anything but easy for the Rebellion.
C9 have had some really dynamite entries on attack, they had some unpredictable roams
that Child of Fire Rebellion either didn't drone out or didn't use their intel operators
well enough to find, and it has gotten to this Rebellion team.
I mean, we're also at a stage, Jesse, where none of these teams are going to look that
dominant.
is a competitive region. So even if Cloud9 is one of the worst teams on paper, you're still able
to make some noise and I mean the scoreline shows you that. Well after the timeout, Shuffle Fire
Rebellion will decide to go to Customs and Supply. This is something SR do from time to time. They
have one strategy on this bombsite. They ran it once in kickoff, they ran it once in Salt Lake City.
Both times they ran this strategy, they were successful. They walked away with W. They run
the exact same operator lineup that they're used to running here. So it shouldn't be a big surprise
to cloud nine they should have known that this was a possibility the question mark
behind monk's name I know it's not in the question marks really sell what just
happened there I gotta say that brand new team
now I was just talking about SR's defense that up in bed I was saying regardless of
this setup and it's going to be a man advantage favor in the rebellion and that really has
nothing to do with their own efforts but still they will take it a five before advantage
early and taking down Monk one of the best players on cloud nine that's a big pick.
He's been really good leading the team until Tong Tong surpassed him in the previous I
think Tong Tong is Eddie.
Yeah.
Is that correct?
Correct.
Eddie's been a bit of a warrior hasn't he? He's been around the pro-play scene now for quite some time.
If memory serves correctly, he used to play when we actually played on land back in Vegas, so he's been around for quite some time.
Maybe I'm wrong, maybe he didn't, maybe he started playing shortly thereafter, but that whole period of time is just a blur in my eyes.
But it's crazy to think that Eddie, as he is, is more of a veteran of the scene than a number of players currently competing in the NAL.
I mean, he's been around the block?
Oh, my goodness.
Down goes Spoight, SR, in a bit of trouble now,
as there was almost another that died at the hands of Pambazous.
He goes hunting upstairs inside of security.
He won't find anything. One minute to go, Jesse, in the round.
On a nice little frags, takedown in Canadian.
Again, this setup will be known by Cloud9.
The area frags here on the top floor will get the advantage back over towards the rebellion.
And now it's just gonna be Eddie trying to fight his way through the top floor full.
One finds the pick, but surf is right back there for the last two.
Exactly what they needed to steal the momentum back.
Customs and supply remains undefeated for the rebellion now three and oh this season.
The bungalow later, Jesse.
The bungalow later.
I'll tell you, you didn't bungle that at all.
Really nice play to again break the streak that Cloud9 was on.
These teams have always won consecutive rounds.
That obviously is not good if you see the current score line because if SR wins back-to-back rounds, that is the ballgame.
It's a nice shot right there. It's exploited tons of intel. I gotta say, I mean, I know it's bordered,
and I know that some of the players that have been getting these shots are really hyper aggro fraggers,
but there's been some really nice gunplay so far in this matchup.
Yeah, I mean whether it's ambies, crazy 3k, flicking all over the place down below, whether it's been monk hitting some nice shots, Eddie's been really active, Spoyt's been great, Surf's been great, I mean, I wouldn't point fingers in any direction, frankly.
Everybody has shown up today and has had their moments inside the server. Despite a couple of slow starters in this series, I think at this point everybody has really come alive.
Cloud9 will need a bit of a hero here in round 12. It is do or die, and Vent Workshop is the call, so what does this look like for Cloud9 as an attack?
Well, going back to basics, they've got the sentier back on the shield play, they've got Monk here, in on the snake.
Got lots of information to try to play around with. We try to take this map control, but when the spoits playing inside of security and break,
we've got Ambi playing as well as he has been, it's never going to be a simple task.
Long hoping to break it with double digits, that would be quite the entry, wouldn't it?
Yeah.
As you can play that selfish operator, Odd Snake, but it's also backed up by Pambazoo.
In fact, multiple players on C9 in relatively close proximity.
SR being given a massive leg up in round number 11.
By an untimely team kill as Pambazoo had put Monk in the ground, you can't be committing mistakes like that,
stakes like that, especially not when you were getting toward the end of the match.
It's gonna say series, but I mean, I guess it's only one map. It's not really much of a series, Teehee.
That Canadian playing in a very comfortable spot for him. This portion over by Lobby, down below, watching the stairs.
Technically, it's called waiting on the compass. He's got Spoyt not too far removed. Right now, Spoyt has their attention.
Canadian lines up a nitro cell, lets her rip, but unfortunately C9 does not take the bait for fans of Astar.
They trade Canadian right back as Pambazoo dies with the hands of Ambi. How did you miss that? That is gonna hurt!
Spoyt gets away, Jesse, with his life still intact. Oh my goodness.
Spoyt, he's now retaking Canadian's position, so entering in here is gonna be tough, and Black Ribs aware.
He got the kill onto Canadian straight through this angle, and we'll find another one. Huge 2k coming in from center.
Now, 8 and 10, a slow start to this game, but is really able to bounce back as he picks up these shields on the attack.
An SR hunting for a refrag, but it's not going to be given.
All three of these players up above the bomb site desperate to get a kill.
There's a good read on the head of Rexon, it's playing on that angle.
Cloud9 stole the minute to readjust here.
This is an incredibly important round for them.
They drop this round with the advantage they have.
Drop of Fire Rebellion walks away with a clean win in regulation, and they will catch, toward
a pound or pound who goes, and be with yet another.
Things falling apart speed on with just one player remaining, surface is hands full, the
bungalow later will drop, Rexman is still there for some insurance.
It's all up to tongue tongue, up top.
Over the bomb site does not have case control, though it is within reach.
He's got time to pull this off, but if the coverage for the rebellion is good, this will
to be a mighty challenging position to be in.
Surf is tucked away in the corner,
no way for Tung Tung to see him at all.
There goes the drop.
His position will now be known.
The rebellion looking to land the knockout punch.
Which one of the two will do it with time running out?
Do they just give it to the clock?
No, it's the bungalowator who doesn't bungle that yet.
Again, SR75, it's a tight one,
but they topple Cloud9 in regulation.
Big 3k from Serpent back to back around to take down his little bro here in the North America League.
A good start for Shopping Firebellion.
It will receive the maximum number of points for the regulation win here up against Cloud9,
but you said it, Parker.
Very back and forth.
A lot of good stuff shown off by Cloud9 today.
And now we are fourth match in the books.
We want to hear from the winners of SR after this break.
Oh
Yeah
points out of this one maybe took them a little longer than they would have hoped that we get
to ask them exactly how they feel this match went. Ambi is standing by and ready to go. Ambi we
described you as having one of the most insane performances on the main stage at the major.
What's it been like slowing things down again not playing in front of a crowd kind of getting back
to the rhythm. How was the team adjusted back to daily life I guess. I mean I think we're we're
We're just fine, you know, uh, we're all used to playing online stages.
Uh, I think it's more rare for us to play on stage than online.
So I think, I think we're doing just fine.
Have you not seen his numbers on Twitch after that?
I'll see.
I mean, I think he's sitting at like 1.5 K viewers.
I mean, he's getting all the love and support, but ambi.
I mean, I want to talk about the matchup today.
Obviously, I think it was a little closer than what you guys wanted.
Tong Tong and, uh, I believe Zootopia and monk were giving you guys a little
a bit of a hard time, kind of want to run me through that series, kind of where things
were going wrong, whether it was in the early round, mid to late round, if you just want
to kind of run me through the series.
Um, I mean, I think, I mean, we kind of knew going into what they're going to do.
I mean, an attack, I think, uh, they won three straight because of changing up what we're
doing.
I think they went back to just playing them East and we just dismantled them.
And then on the defense half, they literally just went east every time.
Like we knew what they were going to do, and like we just had time to fully counter their
east takes in that first.
Like, I think I was kind of trolling on the defenses.
I kept getting first picked by Cowwalk and yada yada, nothing alive, but it was the one
round.
It was the one round.
I don't care which round it was, it was towards the very end, but there was a Blackbeard outside.
I think Troy was playing bottom east.
it was playing on the balcony swing, like, I don't know what happened, but it just ran
in front of the Blackbeard.
It just walks past the Blackbeard, jumps over the railing, stays below, dies to the Blackbeard.
It was definitely a chaotic round for sure.
It felt like a really cool welcome into NA League.
I didn't think it was that goofy, you know?
Like, thank you for the entertaining match.
Actually, I mean, the border is always going to be entertaining.
I grew up as crazy.
Yeah, honestly, it was a great game to watch.
I just want to go back a little bit to I think the most important topic which was the major for you guys because obviously
It's like the best result of your current roster at a big international event
What was the biggest learning from that event for you guys?
That you know that we are a good team and like if we just we play our game and that
We stay calm play our game like we are a good team and we can do like
Good things in this game doing good go to the Grand Final
obviously didn't win it of course but like we have the potential to be a great team if we play our game.
Do you think that there was one key takeaway or one thing that you guys missed to win it in the end?
Because it was already a great step to get to the grand final but what did you guys think you were missing to actually win the major?
Uh, I mean, I mean, you could say experience I guess because it was, I mean, not how you experienced it really in Trojan grand finals.
I just think I honestly just think that like we're playing really god sing that day
They had our number and we did not play up to our expectations really like I don't really think
We were like I mean we were missing our like our gameplay that day really
I was gonna say do you hate when at any point at a LAN event going into a domestic matchup instead of playing an international?
I hated playing yeah
It's it's definitely not like the most fun because like oh you're going to land with the Polish international teams
And they play night and I was like, bro. It wasn't important in but like I mean, you know
Some people definitely hate it. I I don't mind it because I think it's all the same. I'm gonna be honest
But it's it's all it's all fun for sure. Well, I mean, thanks so much for your time as always congratulations on the win
We'll see you guys
I'm sure down the road as you guys turn your attention to trying to make EWC. Thanks so much, man
Well, flight A finish and a woohoo to close it out from Mb.
I mean, chop a 5 million, as you said, like maybe it wasn't the scoreline they wanted,
but at the end of the day, when we look at this in three days, it's not going to make a difference.
It's not going to make a difference.
Win to win at the end of the day, and for every single team, it's really just about making playoff.
So the faster you can get there, the best way you can do it doesn't have to be the cleanest.
We even saw from them in kickoff, they had the shakiest start of a stage for themselves
or a season, whatever you want to call that,
and they ended up making playoffs.
And that really is the angle and the fact that they can walk away here with three points.
That's what they're going to take away from it.
I think some good, nice, positive things for Cloud9.
I think that Monk is a great addition.
Oh, yeah, a great addition.
I think that his debut was really promising.
And despite all of the fun and the chaotic gameplay that we saw from the game,
and from the names of his teammates, let's be honest, it was a bit goofy.
Oh, I like your accent with some of the names.
I'm not going to say the names.
I will say one thing, it's hard for me to keep up with players that have not qualified to anything
and then on top of that, that changed their name on game day.
I will be honest with that. I will say that monk4debut was amazing.
You know, if you look at the statistics, he's, you know,
having better than ambi and we all know the potential and the skill that ambi has.
I think that, you know, we said at the beginning it was going to be a TDM game by taking them to border.
He had the confidence to show up on game day for his tier one debut.
And honestly, exceptional play for an M.
And then it's not the only thing I think overall, you know, Eddie also showed a great level with Kotlin.
I'm not going to say that.
And because I'm afraid of my accent and how it may sound.
How bad could it sound though?
Just let's hear it.
We'll never know.
I guess we'll give the stream a little taste.
I guess we'll never know.
Truly, truly.
I'm loving this.
But anyway, obviously, what?
Huh?
Huh?
He hates me.
Yeah, it's so fine.
He just can't do it.
He just can't.
Well, we move on as things just completely fall off the rails here to our final matchup of the night
We look to five fears as they take on their opponents in outlast
These are two teams that came bursting on to the kickoff stage just a few months ago
But with very very
Different results five fears looked incredible. They did not drop a single game
Domestically Leo and on the other side outlast they didn't win a single game
Yeah, didn't win a single game and didn't win more than two rounds in each of the match that they played in but focus on the positives
Focus on five years a team that surprised everyone at kickoff that went undefeated that took the first seat of an A
Going to Seoul like city and even in Seoul like city many people could have said you know that they wouldn't they would show up
And it was a fluke and that they would not compete well at international level
Well, you know what they made everything close made everything close with Virtus Pro for example with some of the very best
Not even just Virtus Pro, I mean, face clean.
Face as well, yeah.
5-7 against them.
I mean, there really is a lot that this team has to showcase
and that we really have to give them place for.
It's not very common, you see a team come into the league
and be able to make the stride that they have.
Obviously, we talked to them and kick off.
We knew, you know, the previous stage,
it wasn't good when they were on Envy.
They ended up bringing Forrest onto the team
to kind of help with that.
And I think his dynamic that he's taken from that SSG
and being able to instill with them.
I think it really pays dividends, especially just,
they're all a bunch of group of guys that joke around,
have a good time, and you clearly see it every time
we get interviews with them.
And I mean, this is really a team.
I think this guy is the limit.
I think the hardest thing that I do have to address
coming into this stage is they have the unknown factor
where no team could figure them out.
It was an accelerated league.
They had that advantage going into the matchups.
Now they're coming into a regular stage.
They're gonna play all nine teams.
teams understand what their playstyle is, so I have to see some sort of recourse from them
that shows that they aren't relying on shield, that they do have a backup plan,
and that they have more depth in their strat book.
That's the question here, right? Because this is a team that prides themselves.
Almost their tagline is changing the narrative, defying the narrative, defying expectations.
What they're really focused on has to be here, Leo, is maintaining the narrative from last
maintaining the consistency and the dominance, can they do that?
More importantly, it's not even about consistency, it's about getting better.
Because realistically, how did the magic happen?
The magic happened because, like you said, they were playing a three weeks long kickoff
because they were facing big teams, big names that had made huge roster changes.
What are we looking at down the funnel of this NAL Stage 1?
We have M.A.T. has been reinforced by one of the best IGLs in the world, okay?
At the same time, 100 thieves have been reinforced also
by one of the brightest rookies coming into NAL and Hot and Cold, one of the most accomplished
ideals of NA. Then you have Wildcard, the nemesis that eliminated them from the Major.
You have Shobify Rebellion, the runner-ups to the last Grand Final of the Major, and
the actual Major Champions, right? All five of these guys of this team story can't qualify
to EWC, only four spots remain, okay? And I see six teams in front of me. This is the
task, the impossible task that is in front of five years, repeating the miracle of not
only quantifying to WC but also having a decent show there on main stage. So how much of this is
their passion carrying them through and how much of this was the surprise factor? Can they actually
do it again? That's the big question Mark and he needs to start today by taking the three points
against the weakest opponent on paper in the Nile. I agree, Outlast as that weakest opponent. They
have that moniker because of their performance and kickoff. They did not get a single win,
they did not get a single point. We did not have the highest expectations for this team laxing
because they were the second team to make it through the Challenger series.
They weren't supposed to do well, but we still need to see a little more from them
to prove that they need to keep their spot in the NAL.
Yeah, I think it's easy to paint the narrative for this team
and what the expectations we are coming into this stage.
But I don't want to necessarily focus on that
because I do want to focus on the positives of this team.
And I think a big proponent for me is they stayed together.
They believed in their system regardless of a very abysmal stage or kickoff rather
And that they believe that those five can make work because those five work their ass off to even get to this point to make it into the stage.
And I think that really shows how much they believe in each other as a team, how much they believe in themselves as individuals.
And given the time that they had, they have about two months total now to be able to well refine their strats,
depth in their strat book, be able to just be more reliable of a teammate as an individual,
and to be able to replicate some sort of success that there were glimpses in some of their matches.
Granted, it was very minor, but you did see something where it was like,
okay, maybe a little more time, we can see something better.
And that's the biggest thing. They have a little bit more time. It's NAL,
you know, they have a lot more time to play a lot more matches and throw new things at the world.
And it will start on Shelley.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, another big thing for me. I mean, regardless, regardless of map,
Second matter, five fears. This is a very strong map for them. They're 3-0, they beat teams like SR, they beat teams like Wildcard, they were very impressive with the shields.
If I'm outlasted, I'm going to try to eliminate those factors. I'm going to get rid of those shields.
But if I'm outlasted at the same time, they struggled very heavy on their attacks. They were very telegraphed, they weren't problem solving, they didn't have a solution.
I'm really going to need to see Trev Mack come into fruition here and really take the reins, especially in those mid to late rounds.
Well, it's good to close out the night with a good five-fear show.
Let's see what JJ Blast can cook up.
Or if this Outlast team is going to change the narrative,
I guess, on their side of things.
Parker and Jesse, what do you guys think?
I mean, if you look at what happened during kickoff,
expectations for Outlast should be really quite low.
If we're being frank here, they were, by a country mile,
the weakest team in North America.
But as we've seen from today, all of the teams
that we expected to do badly have actually over-performed.
So I wouldn't be shocked if Outlast are able to put up quite a match, just based on the results earlier.
Five years though, five years though do have some LAN experience, so who knows, Jesse?
Yeah, I mean this would be kind of the opportunity.
Your first game of the season, jump out the gate and get the upset win against what is ostensibly your rival.
I mean, don't forget, at the start of the year, these were the two teams that came in through the Challenger series,
who were able to grind their way up through tier two just to be able to play here in the North America League,
the game. We've had a lot of
players that have been
playing in the last few years.
Since then, they have had two
very different routes. I guess
sorry, it was for funny sports
wasn't it back when they were
one of 30 that came in through
Challenger League, so five years
as well. A very new team to come
in alongside outlast, but
regardless, the task will be
set here. It will be a difficult
game to be going up against a
squad like five years who have
that land experience, as you
said, and all we can ask for
is improvement. The desk said
Improvement here again. Yeah, so what we look at here with this would sell last team. They are just they're just out
I haven't seen that before they're just out on the top. It's five fears versus out
The hardest word is Canadians for us to say by the way because we just say ute. I want to give some credit here snake
Dude, you look good with the beard
Don't get rid of that beard you have like he can grow a nice mustache like look at that
I think it's a pretty good
game. That's a good one. He's
got that. He looked right at
the camera. That's you can't
time that. You can't teach
that. You got mugged a little
bit, and you got the cat in the
background. So on all fronts,
this is this is a clean
performance coming out from
Snake and hopefully we'll get
backed up by his skill in the
server. He was definitely the
best player on five years
throughout the earlier part of
this season. He's got actually
the highest defense KDR of any
player here in the North
He's a DM on the defensive side, very good on the attack as well, don't want to downplay
that.
On all fronts, Snake has been putting up some ridiculous numbers and I think we're going
to see more of that here today.
He completely agreed.
He's attested and proven quantity and while he never won a world championship with that
TSM roster, he was still a part of a good core after they had won SI.
I mean, if you're entrusted to join that team after they won a world championship, you are usually in a
In pretty good company here
And he's really made his impact felt on five fears both during kickoff and of course during the Salt Lake City Major
We've been referencing the numbers on these teams during kickoff and unfortunately for outlasts those numbers are not very good
The three lowest rated players during kickoff were all players on outlast Millie Lager and Nesta
Lager playing under Logan today
No real goofiness going on with the player names, Forrest is playing under foe, he's been playing under that for a while.
Snake was playing under Captain Jack, he's back on Snake. The only one that's fends is MF for this game.
We just want to get that out of the way after what happened in the last match that people watched.
But things were not much better for the other players on Outlast, be it Veronica Tretnac, the highest rated player on the team who's 31 of 50.
And he's the highest rated player on that last ring kickoff. So unfortunately the bar for outlast is really quite low
We're just hoping that they're able to win a couple rounds and show the growth that they've done over
You know the last two rounds since kickoff ended. My eyes are on Nesta on defense in particular
He's usually the one getting in those first fights for outlast
He's already got a little bit of pressure placing his way
He will let that dope call explode take a little bit of damage and trade off that he won't get called any longer
Here's trevmack for the opening depth those steps out and fence will cut him down
So that's going to be a man advantage and expanded as rival finds Millie. Well a good start for five fears
That's for certain
Chalet will play somewhat similar to the border map that we just saw as there's going to be I imagine lots of
horizontal destruction and some spawn peaks and play through the windows
Logger was hoping for something over by Jimmy's constantly outside
Fens picks up another and so far outlast unable to muster a kill here in the first round
It's all up to logger in this position
I did by that what Joe could be called
He found out by the bees. Oh, this is this is a rough spot to be in the first and only
Flawless round of the day will come at the hands of five fears
Is they out to outlast in the very first round of this meet of this series only flawless round so far
You never know what this map could deliver five fears
Certainly a strong start as they are able to deal with that roam game really nicely
This is definitely going to be one of those maps where you start to really get worried about just how many
Tools the attackers have to hunt down those roamers of course. There's the go could be we didn't we aren't seeing it here
But you're worried about snake on the snake
You're worried about some of these aggressive roam clearing operators to grim from JJ blast getting some good value clearing out certain positions on
That clear coming through from five years. So really nice push nearly a teammate, but the top drag from kickoff will not get involved. So
So, everyone's shooting all this out of five years, and again, it's going to be up to the players on Outlast, I think, to step up and have a little bit more success in the early game.
I mentioned Nesta, but in 40% of all defense rounds during kickoff, Nesta was the first person to die in an Outlast game.
That is not just of his team, but that is 40% of all 10 players in the lobby.
He was going down as the first person.
So I want to see Nesta get a bit more active.
He wasn't the first death in that one.
instead it was this captive of Trefnac, but something to watch out for through these next five rounds.
For those wondering what, uh, what awaits us tomorrow is this is the very final matchup of today.
These teams will of course be in action five years and Outlast will be in the later games tomorrow.
Five years when we play against Shopify Rebellion in match number three.
Oh boy, don't get much easier for Outlast. They have to play up against the defending major champions of Dark Zeros.
So I mean you're starting up against two of the land teams from the major and two representatives from North America
That is a grueling start so if you're a fan of outlast you're hoping that you're forged a bit in fire
And then it gets easier from that point on because of course it will get easier
You will be playing statistically worse teams from that point on you're just hopeful that you know
It's a be able to take full advantage of that
Elva still searching for their very first kill here now as we get about a minute in the round number two
And you've got Millie doing some scouting work next to the bomb site, lots of information
being brought from this OL lineup on defense.
They jumped it actually before the smoke, but it's the shield from Forrest, so he gets
away scot-free, Millie not able to stop that push, and now the pressure comes his way,
Forrest starting to make a charge through the site.
In a plant position, if he wants it, the hatch is open, but the shield is not concerned,
and he begins it.
Down goes Trev-Mag, Forrest finding an opening to get that defuse kit, plant that he will
do just that, there's still a minute forty left.
Obviously, with Treadmack dying, that means you donated the Okai drones to knock him off his drive.
Veronica will die as well. Five fears looking for Millie.
Low give will get one. That's Lager on the board, so no flawless round.
And they muster more now, dealing with the time.
Lager at a good idea, fends his position. Unable to out-dual him to talk to Millie and Nesta.
Make that Millie now.
And a 1v4, blinded by Forest. They will play with their third.
And after knocking him a sunder for us, we'll get the final kill to give five fears their second round here on Shelley
No frills for five fears Parker. They really just take minimal map control on that push
They jump in for the nearest window to site get in with the blitz get that diffuse get down
And there's nothing that can be done about it on the side of outlast five fears did a really good job of making sure they had
The map control they needed there were players up on that solar window in the master window
They had pressure up above so that nobody could outright deny that from the birth
But even if they got in the verts you've got the shield on your back in the forest
It's not the easiest angle to hit
I don't think the birth was pre-made either so you would have needed somebody to
Go and and find that angle later. The hatch was great
But again, it's not gonna be enough when you've got force here on the blitz no doubt one of the best shield players here in North America
Yeah, miss it! You got a fucking drone!
That's the thing for a bit more drone presence.
Well, hey, they didn't meet at the first year out.
Five years off to a good start, and I know that there was a lot of conversation about whether they were the real deal.
They went 4-0 during the kickoff, but as we've said, and other people have said, members of the community, desks, etc.
kickoff was quite short and because they were all best of ones sometimes the best teams don't emerge
From a best of one series as the overall best team that's what the best of three's were for and would you believe it?
But five years ended up being the statistical best team through those as
Well and five years came really really close to making it to the main stage of Salt Lake City
I think any fears that people have whether it be one or five of them should be put to rest about this team
They are the real deal.
Outlast is obviously encountering that right now.
The question for me will be,
five fears on their reign of terror.
Does it matter what side they play on?
Does this change when the sideswap comes in?
They get the leadoff, pick your round number three,
so all things bangin' for the first round for five fears.
The round's deep, and Nesta will have one opening death here.
That is gonna be about 33%.
Krebman gets spared of the stat this time around,
but it's really just been,
It's been on five years really to find these isolated players to work these picks for themselves to set themselves off with a nice man advantage
Walls on the entries they start to get in towards the snowmobile garage
JJ blast will walk his way in there's nobody to swing in
His goal is to open this wall and provide some footholds for anybody who's playing in the back bar position
Those should go off and we'll force a bit of movement from Trev Matt who is playing that anchor hole
He's gonna now have to play a little bit more aggressive inside of games
It's just close on the window, but map control isn't completely out of hand for Outlast.
They still have good control in and above the bomb site.
I mean, Fenz is looking like he's having a great time now,
sprinting across the snowy roof here of Chalet,
on Snake gaining pretty strong information.
The only person on the side of five years who's died through these two rounds was Snake,
as Outlast has only been able to muster a single kill up to this point,
and Veronica taking some damage as well.
Millie has suffered through a bit of it too,
so things not looking very well for this Peltlast team
as they are spread across the site being hunted down
by five years with a minute still left to go in the round.
Not inside just yet.
The forces hopped this way inside Piano,
but they're holding a cross from outside of library,
so the Utah will come through from rival.
Let's try to force some positions to move,
but I think it got caught by a Womai magnet,
so no movement has to come through.
These players have been pushed back here on the stairs.
It's just gonna be longer and playing aggressive inside a library and he does go down to rivals.
Now a two-man lead for Five Fears.
No, no, but you, Jesse, better just hold my breath a little bit there.
The stack up from Five Fears certainly looked like a team kill.
It was possible if they weren't particularly careful about it.
Treadmack caught on the cross as Milly is the only one able to muster a kill so far.
This round, and that'll be all she wrote.
Two kills for Outlast.
Across three rounds is not gonna get the job done.
five fears are punishing outlast every step of the way.
Some point the coach is likely to call a timeout.
This has been really rough from outlast so far.
The advantage has been just so dominant
for the side of five fears.
It's not just 3-0, but I mean, you said it.
Only two kills through three rounds.
It's the way they're losing these rounds.
It just feels like they can't exist on the roam
because they're getting logic bomb and snake
tracking completely found out.
But they also can't exactly exist on the anchor
because if you give up all of this map control, well,
pretty quick they're just going to be able to flood in through sight they're
able to take all that space and really put you in a box so
shali's a tough map to defend nobody is going to deny that this is a really
difficult map when the attackers run all the windows and
especially in an era of doka being snake it can be a nightmare for sure but
they have to find some way around it here is the time out from super oxy
hoping to get out last back on track before this game gets to out of hand
It's, if I can break the fourth wall for a second here, whenever you encounter a team
that is playing a little bit the way that Outlast did, especially during kickoff, it
presents a bit of a challenge for us to be able to cast this, because, you know, obviously
you want Outlast to do well, but through kickoff and onward, the team is clearly going through
the motions and clearly struggling.
And it's, frankly, Jesse, I don't know about you, but it's a little challenging to frame
in a way where it doesn't seem like we're just beating up on the team that is very
obviously struggling and having some problems here you know the guys in
Outlast are great and I think their story is quite inspiring the way that
they were able to cut through you know the T3 then T2 leagues and now make it
all the way up to the top but I was a little surprised that they stuck with
the roster they did I was almost expecting after kickoff to see some
big movements here on this team but you know they've got they've got all a stage one they've got a
lengthy break assuming that they don't end up making it to EWC in Paris this year they've got a
lengthy break when they'll be able to you know hopefully solve some things and I have to imagine
make some roster moves but I just I don't really know what you do if you're OL I mean obviously
smaller sample size here it's only been three rounds but it doesn't really look like we've seen
a ton of growth from this team after kickoff.
Certainly not at least in a way that will result in some more round wins, but
plenty of time spoke to Adapt and as they choose not to ban the Dokka B, they
will bring out a theorized Dokka B counter. People have been talking about this
a lot on social media, but Thunderbird in theory could be a good counter to Dokka B
because if you just let your phone blow up, well then you can walk straight back
over to a Thunderbird station, you can get healed back up to full HP and now you
You can't get called anymore. You can't go on cams, but I mean, hey, you should have some dead teammates or something to help out with that, so...
That's why Veronica's jumped on the Thunderbird. Now, it doesn't matter because there is no dope being played, but there's the mindset behind this idea.
And JJ Blast faking a site rush at the moment, so throws the utility in, trying to pull players back to site, but not committing to the plant.
Ying hasn't really been an operator that we've been talking an awful lot about today, and I mean, she's had...
some, she's got some competition for her role. When these are bringing Deimos, Snake, and
Doga Bee, especially all three of them together, should that be available, you usually want
to bring one hard breacher, which if you've got can openers, Doga Bee can obviously fit
that, that slot, but typically she's been boxed out a lot of, a lot of this meta, and
if you're going to bring a Ying, you usually need to build around her, and that's exactly
what you see from this lineup of five beers. So I like that they have, I guess they're
gonna bring some intel with the bravo but beyond that I do like that they've
completely formed around JJ and he will be the spot ultimately of the body of
this attack. Yeah but I think this is the best round we've seen so far from
last 90 seconds deep and everyone's alive holding their positions in and
above the bomb site that's what they needed despite not the doka becoming
that they were expecting they can start to try to play a little bit in their
positions waste a bit more time five years going for a rotate themselves
He even over to destroy this mirror window that'll chip in both your windows now blown up
Oh, but actually I think a magnet might have caught that or a maybe in this but in any case the mirror window remains
So Veronica's does not have to get more some of this position and push a piano. It's gonna be really tough
Veronica's hunkered down in his position now managing to tear some strips off of JJ blast assuming that he was the target that we got from that
We know he'll be paralyzed now in this position by glass opening pick goes to Millie, but oh boy
It just falls apart after that Trev Mack trying to keep some life in here for outlast as it's Trev Mack and Nesta
It's the last two standing on the side of O.L
Forest has a good read on them shooting through the wall trying to open things up
The attempt is to make the life for outlast a little bit more challenging down goes Trev Mack and Nesta
But zero kids will need to add in a tally finds one. Oh, that's all he'll get
that. Snake punishing him from that angle through the hatch and it's a 4-0 start for
five years.
The major attendees looking oh so comfortable here against outlast for me. Parker really
comes down to force in that round. The 26 year old veteran for five years takes advantage
of kind of a stall that was going on. Frankly, they didn't have a good way to get past that
mirror window being played inside a library looking towards piano. But as all eyes were
that side of the map as everybody was focused on the glass and the piano pressure in the mirror
window. Forrest just finds a gap and walks his way up those main stairs for an early 2k, finds a
third in the execute as well and will set himself up seven and oh to start a flawless game up against
Outlast. Not a whole lot more you could ask for a normal man like Forrest.
How old is Forrest? Dive into your numbers and also when is his mother's birthday?
Boris is 26, he makes him younger than me, but in an NAL playlist, a player comparison,
that's still pretty old.
When is his mother's birthday?
July 4th.
10 check remaining.
Is that real?
You actually know Forrest's mother's birthday?
Yeah, we're close.
His mom was born on the 4th of July.
The same day as America?
I feel like you're pranking me here. I don't believe you for a second.
I wouldn't lie on a broadcast, Parker. That doesn't sound like something I would do.
Jesse, you openly lie to me all the time, and you take so much joy in it.
Okay, that's fair. Actually, I do do do do.
Yeah, FN's got spawn peaked.
We're talking about Mother's birthdays here easily, okay?
I also saw a notification that Friendly Fire had been activated.
I feel like that was probably just a glitch.
I don't think that can happen in our custom games.
I'm not sure.
It also wasn't a team kill.
Alright. No!
Alright, stay calm. Alright.
You gotta have fun. I'm glad the production and the observers are having fun with this.
You gotta have fun with this, just like C9 had fun with four of their five names in the previous map.
You know, it's just, you gotta roll with it, I suppose.
Obviously, devastating loss is we don't want to glaze over the fact that, or gloss over the fact that
A Deimos was lost early on.
Nuisance Ops still got Doka B on the board.
Millie's phone will explode and is now debuffed.
No phone available, took some damage and is being hunted down now by a forest.
Oh, he gets baited in by Nesta.
This is a decent round for our last, Jesse.
Yeah, they've got a hard ping on Nesta, but I think Forest was overly focused on the ping.
He might have been being spammed and so he doesn't see Nesta actually rotating around
and finds that frag through the rotate, so now it's a two-man lead. Outlast by far in their best spot.
They've still got Ness to control things down below with the nitro-cell too, so even if they can get site control,
planting is not going to be free for five years.
These are starting to get a little better for Outlast here though. Two rounds in a row now, they've struck first.
They only had two players surviving on the side of five years in the previous round.
There's three alive at the present point in time, and Millie's able to do double duty watching the window.
Also take care of the Selma's arrival while he has his hands full in that position.
So things are going much better. This is some steady improvement from Outlast.
While they still haven't been able to put a round win on the board, this is the best work that they have so far.
All five players still upright.
You don't want to peek the glass in the midst of the smoke.
Snake in tough shape. Oh! Longer gets two and Outlast is on the board.
Well, alive in the server, that's what we wanted to see.
Despite some struggles back during kickoff, Outlast didn't have any 7-0 losses during the kickoff.
They always got at least one round.
Unfortunately, they were never able to find more than two 7-2 loss being their best result in kickoff.
But perhaps an opportunity to extend that here against Five Fears.
Again, there's good information flowing on the side of Five Fears in that round, Parker.
But unfortunately, they're just unable to execute off the intel that they had.
the pain covering a little bit for the kill on to Nesta once they didn't have that after the spawn peek as well.
It just puts you in a really tough spot 5v3, so...
Good for Outlast to give themselves that early advantage with the aggressive spawn peek and then the roam from Nesta,
and then to further capitalize on that, not give up any free picks, not move around too much,
and open the door for 5 years to make the comeback. That's just a big play, I like to see that.
Well, we expected growth out of this Outlast team, right?
And I mean, while the growth might not have been immediate, they are still sorting out
how to defend here on this map and how to tackle five fears.
So I mean, if they can put up two rounds in a row, I don't think that's unheard of.
Again, round number four was the best round for Outlast so far in this series.
Then they make it even better with that opening spawn peak on Fens here in round five.
End up winning the round.
Now we come to round six.
And they're feeling themselves.
Ronix was hoping for another spawnpick looking for a repeat as he'd taken down Fens on that helipad just about
Three minutes ago, so outlast for finding their confidence and again
Maybe it was just a slow start hundred thieves had a slow start in their matchup
Outlast could be going through the same thing
Who Millie takes half HP? He needed to save his shield there
He got kind of siege timing where the drone came and snuck off on him when he wasn't looking
So, Karrot has to destroy his shield, but he grabs it in time, and you'd much rather lose half your HP than your shield in this case.
So, okay with the situation that they're currently in.
No Thunderbird this time around to try to beef that health back up, but also no Tokubi to try to secure an early frag.
So, melee should be alright for the time being.
This basement defense is not something we see from pro players very often.
The bottom floor of Chalet generally thought to be the weakest bombsite on this map, and it's not particularly close these days,
but the full anchors that have come through for note last time the other sites have been doing them too many favors
So they're saying why not change things up give it a go. I don't mind it at all
No rumors so this is gonna be a slow round from five years
Already at the halfway point here. So yeah slow has been the name of the game and since they haven't really come in
I guess that's out of what they were doing with Millie down in trench
I was able to settle in up top and do some damage, but again, yeah, I mean, he's setting
up for a position, assuming that there might be a Roma or two.
Now I've gotten the electroclaw, they can start to pressure the bomb site.
I'm liking the timing here that I see from five years.
Yeah, it gets a little bit more awkward with the Tuber out, but they're not juggling kaid
claws and they've got the Thatcher up above with still five charges, so I don't think
it'll be a problem, but it will affect the clock.
and Nesta hoping to get stuck.
What is going on over here?
I mean this is deadly.
Yigga and Kha-Yigga and Kha-Hida having a good time, Jesse.
Oh, oh no.
Jesse.
Jesse, oh no.
That is not what they were hoping out of that play.
They go for the double swing, but they just line up the damels and that is going to be
a nice old TV.
I mean, Fens is reduced to basically Rubble.
He's got very little HP, Veronica's picking up a single kill, that's all at last as it
to show for it.
We get some march improvement through rounds 4 and 5, but unfortunately it would look like Outlast has just met their match here.
Millie now compelled into action as the clash takes up a bit more of an aggressive one, and it was a huge round from Fens.
Four kills for Fens by my tally. That's an incredible one to go to. The first half in the books, Outlast picking up a single round, five fears.
In full controls, we get to hear what the desk has to say about this bout.
Thanks, Parker. 5-1 right now. 5 years in complete control, Leo. What are you seeing
right now?
Great question. I'm seeing a good thing about the NA region, right? A great testament of
love.
5 years is looking really good.
Oh, yeah, I think I'm sure you will look really good against Outlast as well. So let's
take an example of this. Everyone is given up library control. One player remains up top
for some reason, completely surrounded. He's frozen in place. Same thing happened downstairs
where the only anchor is trying to play aggressive here by the window.
He's not supported by anyone.
He gets killed by two players swinging at the same time that's five years playing well.
This player is holding a C4 randomly and throwing it at mud entirely surrounded.
And then we fast forward to the next round.
This is the most team play I've seen from these guys and they still manage to fail that.
I mean, typically, I think it really showcases.
They don't fundamentally understand how Shalaya is played.
Typically, blue stairs, you're going to run in contact with either a smoke or a mute shotgun
holding that staircase.
Not a Cade, not a Valkyrie.
You're not gonna see that ever and then even in the round that you were just talking about the previous round of that
I mean again fundamentally. They don't understand the map. Where's the player playing fireplace?
Where's the player playing top green to just be able to control the map to be able to control the flow of what's going on?
There should never be a scenario where a player is by himself in library. There was a player in library
There was a player top green and there was a player fireplace
The player on library decided to drop the players of green decided to leave but the player in library decided to stay and
And here's my problem. It's not only that fundamentally they don't understand the game to the depth that they should at the pro level
It's also that they're not committing to the same idea at the same time
And so if you look at the basement here, they're doing a basement turtle on garage in big 2026
No, thank you
Big 2026 20 so like I'm just thinking that's fine. You can still make it work
Honestly, you can still make it work
But you can't entirely give up the entirety of the map, like in the first minute.
Otherwise, then the protein is going to get so much control.
They're trying to play default, but first and foremost, it's not the right default.
And even by playing that way, they're not playing it well.
No, I mean, it's clearly a lack of miscommunication.
And this is certainly, like I said, coming into the stage.
I'm going to be a little more critical on these teams that maybe not had the most success last stage.
And with the time that they've had off, if this is what the work is showing,
It's literally the exact same thing, if not worse, which I don't know how you could get worse, because you were pretty much at rock bottom before, but there is clearly a big disconnect and a very big lack of understanding the map that they are playing right now.
Well, if a map win isn't in the cards, Outlast at the very least hoping to reach their new high in terms of round count, which would be three if they can get to that third round mark.
So that's what we're going to be looking for two more rounds from Outlast and that will
be the most they've had so far in T1.
Let's see.
Jesse, the question needs to be asked, what is improvement for Outlast at this point?
Would you care to tell the good people Outlast scores during kickoff?
I mean Jonah kind of gave the game away Parker, but in kickoff they lost 7-1, 7-2, 7-1, 7-2.
So as Jonah said, the high watermark would be three rounds here of against five fears.
I guess the pattern suggests this will be another 7-1, but I have to believe for the
sake of Outlast that that pattern will break eventually, and I have to hope that that will
be today.
It's acting on Charley.
Can sometimes be easier than playing on the defense.
So there is a sliver of hope there for sure, but you're going to have to really find some
way to disrupt five fears, because I think they're playing extremely well right now.
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to really surmise if this is outlast having problems or Five
Fears just being one of what we assume is the top teams in North America.
I mean, through kickoff and then Salt Lake City, NA has been a surprisingly good region
over the last couple months.
That's not something we've been able to say for North America time and time again.
But hey, we'll take it.
The thing is that Five Fears is one of the best teams in North America, which I know
might surprise people if you haven't really paid attention since, say, Paris SI.
The five fears have obviously earned this reputation.
Fens nine kills, forest eight kills,
forest eight and one by the way is a bit crazy,
but I mean, he's doing well and the team is gelling.
Forest also had some pretty good numbers
across Salt Lake City.
So I guess underrate him at your peril.
Two rounds for five years and they walk away
with the most dominant stat.
So far today, that is a rough one for Forest.
Can he get back in in time?
Yes, he can, Veronica manages to get away
with his life still intact.
No harm, no foul, force gets away with it after some damage is dealt, so he'll be more than happy with that.
Ableton now just kind of retake this trope position, play in and around the bomb site.
Outlasts are going to be looking to take this with a ying-stra, Trev-mack the captain playing on this operator,
but they're still looking to take map control as well.
They don't want to allow these players to resist up to the top floor, which is why you're seeing Lager come around here to the balcony,
and you've got still some pressure on the library side from the attackers as well.
Nesta our shield player. He is the cheese on Outlast. He's going to be the one to try to make this space.
Don't know what it is about the French Canadian players loving their shields, but here he goes.
Front and center trying to open up the door for his teammates.
Waiting for the call with
smoke in hand. There goes Lager at the hands of Fenn. It'll be 10 kills now for Fenn. She breaks double digits.
Only person in the lobby to do so this advance from Outlast is far a little bit on his face,
but Nesta and Brodix has something to say about that immediately tying numbers up.
After five years, Atlanta's not one to two punches to start things off.
45 seconds still remaining. Brodix will find another. Down he goes though.
His forest will retreat immediately in a very quiet JJ blast,
both from typing, but also from the kills department has managed to get away with his life still intact as well.
30 seconds to go.
Nesta will now work together to try and win this round.
El last desperate for this, but there's Forrest to take care of the shield.
And Millie's still upstairs.
We'll have his work cut out for him, Jesse.
Forrest with 11 kills, he himself breaking double digits.
It's a terrific round from one of the two veteran presences on this five-fierce team.
You know where Millie's coming from?
Forrest has a good read on this.
Millie running around.
He'll be the one credited with this kill.
Time running out.
Millie's got a read on it.
He'll take care of JJ, Forrest just needs to survive, and he will do just that.
One player apiece still alive, but the timer will give it to Five Fears, who would go on
the match point.
A little close for comfort, but Forrest looks cool, calm, and collected after a round like
that.
Brings himself up to 11 kills total, and will win the 1v1 on time, so beautifully done to
come through from, as you say, the veteran presence here on Five Fears.
This just barely slightly positive a 1.05 through the season so far coming into this game
But it's finding huge success up against the young team on outlasts just made up
Entirely of rookies all five of these players just making their debut in kickoff
There's the run-up that we got to see again not quite good enough to get the frag
But when we go back to this top floor right the trade game was strong enough for five years
He'll answer back a couple of kills and then Force actually flanks off to the solar stairs to get those two picks
That's the real difference maker that they weren't expecting on the side of outlast as soon as
He makes the plays I'm sorry
I had to mute myself just for a moment because JJ blast is my future caster
Co-caster so I want to hear what he has to say. Oh, that's right
Yes, JJ was very upset that you and I had to work together
and he said that you'll replace me when JJ is ready to retire so I'll get that.
Fingers crossed, hopefully it's sooner rather than later, but unfortunately he's playing pretty well, so I'll make the wait a bit.
I'm just quite enjoying that rainbow is magic.
Again, that thing is... that is a delight. It's a delight. It's a delight.
Final round here, Jesse.
I mean, this is gonna be the determining factor, right? Will this be outlasted?
Third, seven, one loss in five games for the professional team. We certainly hope not, but the pattern suggests that might be how it goes.
It's been some decent showings, I think, from these players. I think Nesta's had some good moments.
Millie, of course, so close for clutching up that last round. Has it. If the round lasts just a second more, but you can't dwell on the pass at this point, Parker.
You've got to find ways to stay in it mentally and of course in the game as well
It's gonna be a full map clear as we head towards the bar bombsite
So probably not a whole lot of action early
But the plot floor players around mezz around library those are gonna be the guys to watch out for guys like snake guys like fans
Nice Marcel now in hand for the bearded snake chat while we're here
What do you think of snake with the beard do you keep it do you shave it off? I think it suits him quite well
I'm like in the aura he did
It was aura farming just as his point was for a bit in that Shopify rebellion game
My fears just need to wait out the remaining 90 ish seconds
And then they will find their first victory here is outlasts to suffering through the same fate that they had during kickoff
Obviously, they can change that and Veronica's has really come online over these last two rounds
Approaching the only positive KD on the team, but it's still a bit of what he's away
He and Millie within one. Tremac and Logan down for the count after Fens is taken care of.
Oh my goodness. Five beers demolishing out last. And the man, the myth legend, we said Varonex
was approaching a positive KD. Is he going to get there? He's got four targets to find.
Hunting his way over towards Piano. Nothing to be had. Snake will give them a mercy killing
as Varonex bites the dust.
Seven won, four, five fears in our final matchup.
Up in the days, some more work to be done.
We're out last, and yeah, Trev-Mack,
I'm right there with you.
Five fears win, there's seven,
straight from the middle game,
and there's Tyler in with it, Parker.
We've had fun today, but we've got the dust
to interview our winners and break everything down
ahead of our next couple of playdays.
We'll throw it to them.
Well it is all smiles for five fears and rightly so a completely dominant
performance over Outlast Gaming 7-1. It wasn't even close five fears we said.
Will they be the team atop the standings again Leo for right now? Well they will be.
Yeah I mean realistically if you can clearly see the gap I want you know I'm
just thinking of the meme stop stop is already dead so I won't you know I
I won't continue to speak about that, but I think we're looking at a bunch of players that are clearly inexperienced,
have worked their ass off, like Lex said, to get to KO1, and they chose to stick together.
I think there is learning they can take. Like I said, a stage of NL is long, you have a lot of play days.
I just would like to see more spark, more unpredictability, not try to play too perfect, rather try to play unpredictable and chaotic.
I think some of the rushes they did on attack especially towards that piano side
Which was the only round that really got close by the way
I thought that was one of the kind of play style I can really bring to try to bring that that kind of you know
Russian energy try to throw everything at the wall because if you play default you're not doing and that's the thing though
Leona again
I know you're new here on the NAL
But like this is something that we were seeing a lot last stage and this isn't what I meant in terms of
coming into this, especially on that attacking half.
Like I wanted to see a lot more problem solving
and the problem solving isn't to me
to just throw bodies in a situation
because you could see how disjointed they are
even in their attacks in some of these rounds.
I mean, I do feel that some of these rounds
they did have the man advantage
and then someone would just overstep, lose another body
and then they would just keep trickling down from there.
So I mean, they have the workings to make it work.
It's just, I think individually people have to realize
situation they're in and just pump the brakes and say how do we get to this next step? How do we isolate
this player? And then they can secure another round and then hopefully get to that third round.
Well I know this team is ready to go and I know five fears JJ Blast as always will have some
choice words for us. JJ congrats on the win you guys are starting off the stage with a good one
here 7-1 over Outlast. Oh there of course, of course yes. Tell me about the narrative here.
the expectations that you guys have going into this stage right obviously last in kickoff you guys
you told me you had a tweet drafted weeks before your eventual qualification the slc major do you
have any tweets in the draft already what what's the situation going over there that's too early for
that real quick before i get into that question because that's a lovely question uh alphama
my friend i remember a certain tweet rating the players i know i know i know there's nothing
I mean, I'm not going to be
talking about anything of
rage about nothing about me
except one thing, brother. Alright
anyway to answer the question. Um
Yeah, I mean, we don't a big
thing. We built this team on
especially once we started to see
success. I think our coaching
staff drills into us is there is
no expectation. There's only
standards and every day we just
try to get on and uphold our
standard. And I won't lie like
honestly, since we came back to
the major, we've kind of been
struggling a little bit more than
we thought we would have. Um I
think a lot of people caught up
two shield bands cut out of outlasts and kind of expecting that the whole stage man
So I'm trying to add to the duffel bag trying to be more versatile as a team
And you know some of the scrims I've been going so well at the start
But I think you know as the season progresses on I think we're starting to catch a groove a little bit now
And I also think we're a unit that like one kind of the game day comes around
I think we kind of we try a little harder. Unfortunately one day we'll figure out in screens
But for the time being I think we're slowly progressing
Well JJ again, congratulations on yet another win
I mean you guys are on the right track just similar to where you were in kickoff
That's how it all starts with one win see if you can have another flawless stage, you know
That obviously be pretty sweet, but I do want to talk about this match in particular. Obviously you touched up on it
I said going into this for outlast if they want to have any little bit of chance into this is to get rid of the shields
They got rid of those shields you guys immediately pivoted to bringing solid snake you brought the dope
Could be you're bringing a lot of information that was still being able for you guys to rely on
on information and play out that information.
So clearly it's showing that you aren't just so reliant
on shields anymore, that you do have a backup contingency plan
if those shields are eliminated.
So to your point and how hard you guys are working,
obviously I don't know the inner workings
of what scrims are looking like,
but you clearly understand where your strength was last season
and what teams are going to try to do
to take that away from it.
It seems like you guys have a proper response.
And as you were saying, just adding to that duffel bag.
Yeah, for sure. When we came back, the first week in out, we weren't even a lot of players' shields.
Even if they left out a lot of players' game plans. We know it's coming.
So yeah, we're just trying to expand, man. Obviously, we are great with the shields,
and it just makes life easier. But I mean, a lot of people think we can't problem-solve this stuff,
and stuff like normal meta, like that too, and just like, you know what, me and Forrest look around with shields.
We'll do it. But I'm not shooting now! But I'm strong as hell as back, baby!
Honestly, like, I won't lie to you, you're so materialist.
You knew what I was expecting from you at kickoff.
I won't lie to you, I saw the names and I was like, you know, none of these guys are
names that I've seen in the international events and it's not guys that I follow because
it's not my region.
And you came out of the blue at kickoff and like, not only do you surprise me, you surprise
everyone, like, who the bet on you guys to go undefeated?
Let's be honest, no one.
Not even us, brother.
Yeah, exactly.
And so I'm going to ask you a very straightforward question
Many people could have said it was because kickoff was three weeks long and it was a short stage and and there was a group of four teams
And it was a fluke
What do you answer to these people thinking that you cannot repeat that miracle and you cannot secure another top-floor and qualify to EWC?
Yeah, I mean, I think that's just like a Mars take out of people are we have like the group of death like we beat Shopify like 7 2 or 7 1
m80
Uh, I ever once had a hundred team is better than us.
And even like one of thirties, like, four fun, like they're a solid team.
Uh, so like we had a hard group, man.
And then we also be wild card.
Like, so like the only team like we didn't get the play was like DZ,
SSG and like that last right.
So like we played all the good teams and we played some close games at the nature.
Two man, I think we, for a team of experience, yeah, we fought our asses off.
I thought like the phase game could have went our way.
I think we've got a little bit better same a VP and like for a team of rookies to be there or like first-year players to be there at the
In the 2-2 game and be a one round three minutes away from qualified for main stage man
It's just a foe told us though. It's been a great leader of the boys
He said the feelings gonna suck man
But we got a whole year ahead of us that we're just gonna keep grinding and out man
And we got a lot of seeds left to play in our lives
All right, JJ. Thank you so much for your time as always a lot of seeds left to play indeed
I'm sure we'll talk to you later. Have a good night man. All stagnation runs
Incredible as always JJ given us some good answers as well. There's some really some really mature stuff first wise words
I've ever heard from forest whoa
celebration
Well, it's no surprise to see five fears in a very familiar spot atop the standings here with the best round differential and a regulation win
They're joined of course with three points by m80 dark zero and Shopify rebellion. I mean we have
shaping up a
We have a big stage ahead and we start the day tomorrow with 100 Thieves and M80.
Yeah, that's definitely a little bit of a grudge match for sure with hot and cold bursting his old Ross.
So that should definitely be one you don't want to miss.
But honestly, today really, again, it's very competitive across the board.
I don't think there's any single game here, maybe I'll ask for a start zero, but outside, maybe play on a wild card.
But outside of that, I do believe we do have a lot of good games tomorrow and a lot of shake-ups can happen.
Impressions. You were here in NA, first time you stopped in the very last minute, so thank you so much for doing that.
What do you think of the competition? How does it stack up?
To what you've seen in the event.
Listen, I've got to give it to you guys. What did you say?
I was about to say something positive.
No, I was just saying.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
I've got to give it to you. It has been entertaining matches.
Really, I've had a lot of fun. We've seen a lot of great level as well.
I thought Dark Zero playing was amazing. I thought that the matches, the match between 100 thieves and Wildcat was insane.
And I told you guys, I feel like really NA has a whole bunch of teams that get compete on the highest of the highest levels.
So, honestly, getting to watch all this with you guys, I had a lot of fun.
It's a late finish for us in Copenhagen. It's like 2 am.
But it's been fun. I'm full of energy. I'm almost sad that I don't get to watch the games tomorrow.
Yeah, we'll have Fresh taking your spot tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll get some more great EML insight and some more EML copium.
You know, we got to experience over here, but thank you to all of you tuning in and joining us in our first day of stage one here in the NAL.
It's been a pleasure to have you. As I said, we'll be back with fresh tomorrow for laxing for Leo. I'm Jonas Rillinger saying thanks for watching and we'll see you tomorrow at 2 p.m.
You