Six Major Raleigh by the Numbers: Group A

Team Empire

Team Empire enter the event as the reigning Pro League champions and the current #1 team in the world, according to the SiegeGG Rankings. Their overall ranking is nearly a thousand points above any team in Group A, which suggests that their path to claiming the top spot of their group will be easier than that of any other team in the event.

While they will not face any European foes in the group stage, Team Empire has displayed their dominance this season as they are yet to be defeated across their seven played maps in European Pro League. This has earned them the first place in Europe, which they narrowly hold over Group C’s Looking for Org.

Individually, the roster has all earned ratings of 1.0 or greater in the first half of this Pro League season, with the exception of Scyther, who sits just .01 below the aforementioned threshold. ShepparD topped Europe in plants as well as overall survival rate. His teammates karzheka and Scyther are not far behind in survival, falling into second and third place for the stat in Europe, respectively.

NORA-Rengo

NORA-Rengo has consistently performed well in Asia-Pacific and their own subregion, Japan, while also showing flashes of dominance in global events. SiegeGG ranks the team second in this group, ahead of both MIBR (Immortals) and Team SoloMid. At the most recent iteration of the Six Invitational, NORA-Rengo advanced all the way to the semi-finals before falling to Team Empire. While they are not guaranteed to meet them in Raleigh, NORA-Rengo will be looking to avenge their previous defeat.

So far in Japanese Pro League Season 10, NORA-Rengo is in second place and have not lost a match. Individually, every player holds a rating of 1.0 or greater, and Merieux has excelled with the second-best rating in the region. ReyCyil, the team’s support player, has the most plants in  the region at ten.

At the most recent Pro League Finals, NORA-Rengo were shut down 2-0 in the quarter-finals. Just one player, Ramu, held a rating greater than 1.0, with the rest as low as .76. To advance to the main stage of the Raleigh Major, the squad needs to perform as they have in Japanese Pro League.

MIBR (formerly Immortals)

MIBR enter Group A with the worst ranking of the four teams, largely due to their performance in both Pro League and Brasileirão (BR6). They have completed the first half of Pro League Season 10 without a win, which has landed them in seventh place in Latin America. In BR6, they placed fifth, which sent them to relegation for the league.

The rocky start to Pro League Season 10 is reflected by the players’ individual performance, in which only Bullet1 earned a rating greater than 1.0. pX, their worst rated player, sits in the bottom three for the region rating-wise during this season. Despite the squad’s recent performance, there has been no moves within the roster during 2019.

In addition, MIBR failed to advance to the playoffs at both the most recent Six Invitational and Six Major. Their weakness against out-of-region opponents has also been shown at the Pro League Season 8 and Season 9 Finals, in both of which they were defeated in the first round.

Team SoloMid

Despite being the lowest seeded team in the group, Team SoloMid (TSM) has an advantage over MIBR in the SiegeGG Ranking. TSM topped their group at the recent DreamHack Valencia and ran through the Six Major Raleigh qualifier bracket in North America to earn their spot at the event. While they have excelled in these best-of-three environments, TSM have struggled in the first half of the Pro League season, sitting tied for last in NA.

Just one player, Achieved, posted a rating greater than 1.0 during the first seven matches of the season. On the bottom of the team, b1ologic and Krusher hold the worst two ratings of any team in the region.

The best-of-three format, which TSM has shown their preference to over best-of-one, will be the key for the squad to move out of the group stage in Raleigh. Since joining TSM, the team has won all but one best-of-three matchup on eight played. In best-of-one series, however, they have won four out of ten in the same time frame.

Head-to-Head

These teams have only met on two occasions, both during the Six Invitational 2019. Team Empire and MIBR (Immortals) met in the group stage and Empire defeated them in two tightly-contested maps. Later in the event, Empire met NORA-Rengo in the semi-finals and advanced to the grand final after a 2-1 victory.

The remainder of the possible matchups between the teams, all of which could be played during the group stage, have not been seen historically. These include Empire vs TSM, NORA-Rengo vs MIBR, NORA-Rengo vs TSM, and MIBR vs TSM.

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Stay tuned for Six Major Raleigh coverage here on SiegeGG, including interviews with each team!