Week 3 of Stage 3 took place last week, as all four regions continued to feature battles for the top-four and safety from the relegation zone.
Following most of these games were interviews with the victorious teams, so for those that missed them, we've summarised the best quotes and responses from the players below.
Jump to:
- EU League -- “We’re waiting for the real revenge in a best-of-three”
- NA League -- “Our attacks have been basically 50/50, it’s kinda a coin flip”
- Brasileirão -- “We have a lot of skill, but right now we need to work on our organisation”
- APAC Leagues -- “We’ve already learnt our lessons from past stages”
EU League
The EU League this week had two surprise results, as Rogue and Virtus.pro beat NAVI and G2 Esports, respectively. Meanwhile, the match that had been billed as the one to watch, Team BDS vs. Team Empire, ended in a very one-sided 7-2 result for the former.
After this latter game, we heard from BDS captain Bryan "Elemzje" Tebessi about the key rematch from the Six Mexico Major semi-finals and his thoughts on the new Bank rework:
This win is a bit of revenge but obviously, we played Empire in a best-of-three so a best-of-one is not the same. We’re waiting for the real revenge in a best-of-three. [...] I think defence wise [Bank] didn’t change that much, at least for the first-floor bombsite. For example, in Open Area you do an extend to Archives or you just roam upstairs so it’s just the same. I think it’s better what Empire did today, roam upstairs and waste time. There’s a lot of operators for this; Vigil, Mozzie, Mute etc. I think the map defence wise will be played the same.
Meanwhile, after Virtus.pro’s 7-5 win over G2 Esports, Pavel "p4sh4" Kosenko came into the post-match interview and explained his team's defensive wins and offensive struggles:
We were playing strong defaults and we adapted a bit I guess on the Bakery defence in the first round. You saw that there were three people playing in Bakery which you never see, it was an unexpected play from us but it worked so who cares. I guess we just played a good defence, we just made no mistakes, we won every clutch we had and that’s just it. It’s just G2 on attack’s kinda struggling. [...] G2 played a strong roam defence at first on Basement and Library. They adapt a lot cause that countered us pretty well. They played time waste strats so that’s the reason we had such bad time management in this case. G2 prepped well.
Finally, after Rogue’s 7-5 victory over NAVI, Leon "LeonGids" Giddens who was initially asked about the curious Villa pick:
We haven’t picked Villa in over a year in any competitive match but basically, we have a new player and IGL in Prano and we want to spice things up. We wanted to throw a curveball in so we started practising Villa a lot and I think we got pretty good at it. [...] We just really play off communication and whatever comes to mind we just do it and I think that’s one massive thing that we do cause it’s something that teams won’t expect, some sporadic stuff to come out on Villa.
While Vp and Rogue still sit in seventh and eighth place across the year, they are now both almost certainly clear of the relegation zone. Even Team Secret in ninth is four points ahead of Heroic in the automatic relegation spot, though will have to play in the relegation match.
NA League
In the North American League, meanwhile, the day began with an upset, as the Soniqs beat DarkZero Esports 7-4, and ended with a very important 7-2 win by beastcoast over Mirage. The latter was an especially crucial games for both teams, as they aim to put as much distance between them and the relegation zone as possible.
In between these two games saw the two favourites of TSM and SSG take down Astralis and Oxygen, respectively, in 7-5 scorelines with an elusive Beaulo interview sandwiched between the matches.
Here, Jason "Beaulo" Doty was asked primarily about TSM’s close 6-8 loss against DarkZero the week prior and spoke about his performance across the season so far:
Against DarkZero we knew where we messed up, a lot of our attacks on Oregon were really not it. I think it’s been a concurrent issue for us that our attacks have been basically 50/50, it depends on the day, it’s kinda a coin flip but we’ve been working on it. We squeezed in three attack rounds this time which is better than the DZ match so it’s all about working on our quirks and getting the W. [...] Honestly, I don’t think I’ve been having too much of a standout season, I guess I’ve been sleeping at the wheel a little bit but we’re working on it, today’s matchup definitely felt good. No matter what it’s just a game, all your teammates are with you, all that matters is the W whether you’re dropping 20 or you’re dropping two.
Brasileirão
Onto LATAM, this week saw one of the most predictable weeks of games in the 2021 BR6 season, as all eight games were won by the higher seeded team.
This meant that we got to hear from Team Liquid’s coach of Adenauer "Silence" Alvarenga on Saturday about the internal team dynamics following their 7-2 victory over W7M Gaming. This comes after Liquid lost their prior two games against INTZ and FaZe Clan in two 7-8 scorelines:
Our players are very aggressive so our play style on the old lineup was that we have to work on the first steps -- the first minute and a half -- so we have all the map control but the main control for the execution we didn’t have. So right now we have a lot of skill but right now we need to work on our organisation. We are working on that to make a little fix in the final seconds of the round as the communication is kinda bad right now.
As well as this, we heard from Ninjas in Pyjamas’ Julio Giacomelli, who has had a rough stage so far after his team lost its three opening games against Liquid, Santos e-Sports, and Team oNe.
Now, off of its 7-5 win over Black Dragons, Julio had this to say:
It was not on purpose but the players were playing [reserved] and we noticed that and changed it at the mid-game. [...] We were trying to not lose any rounds by playing passive but it was not working out so we just changed that and played more aggressive. Things like that are things you see mid-game, you know?
On Sunday, the big matchup saw FaZe face off against NiP, which ended in a rather clean 7-4 scoreline from FaZe Clan.
FaZe's Gabriel "cameram4n" Hespanhol spoke about his team’s approach to Oregon:
I think the reason that got us to win this game is probably the loss against Santos in the first play day. Since MIBR we have been a team that’s been pretty strong on Oregon -- we did pretty well since the BR6 Finals against Liquid if you remember that -- but since the beginning of Stage 3 we have gotten worse there and I don’t know why. Things started making sense during the play days and I think after the Santos loss we realised that Oregon’s started getting more attacker sided if you have good coordination. It’s really difficult to win nowadays [on Oregon defence] [...] if you don’t have lurkers and you stay in site it’s tough to defend that.
With these results FaZe Clan, Team Liquid, and Team oNe have all locked in spots at the Copa Elite Six, with NiP and FURIA likely to do so next week. This would thus mean a fight for the final spot between MIBR, Black Dragons, and (possibly) INTZ will be brewing.
APAC Leagues
In APAC, the biggest result of the week came from GUTS, who beat CYCLOPS in a 7-0 scoreline to record only its third win in 18 games over its Japanese rival. Afterwards via a translator Naoki "Yura" Takamoto stated the following about the result:
For our play style today, we just played how we usually do but we’re kinda surprised as well how the game went on. [...] Recently, we haven’t been performing well in-game, we’ve been doing better in practice but we couldn’t perform to our best in-game so we’ll keep up the good work that we’ve been doing right now and we think it’ll be good in the next game.
These comments mimic what SyAIL said after mantis’ win over CAG two weeks ago; that he was “not really sure why [they] won” and had simply “did as practised” to take the win against what’s usually a very formidable CYCLOPS team.
Down in APAC South, Invictus Gaming captain Glen “Lunarmetal” Suryasaputra elucidated upon his team’s climb back to the top despite a protracted battle with ORDER:
Yeah, every week, we’re always expecting the worst. We’ve already learnt our lessons from past stages -- not to take things easy, ever. So even if we’re going to play against, I don’t know, a random unknown team from like tier-four, tier-five, we’ll still take it super seriously.
Meanwhile, Wildcard Gaming head coach Wille "r0usty" Turunen spoke pointedly regarding Elevate being allowed to hot-swap a player from its academy roster to its APAC South roster:
It’s been an eventful day, to say the least. Like, first trying to figure out if we have the same rule book (as other teams) and just Ubisoft just… giving it really close to the game when we were able to get (it) and… it kinda f-ed up everybody’s preparation and everything else.
SiegeGG will be covering all these tournaments as usual so check back for stats, news, and highlights for your favourite teams!