Next week, the Six Sweden Major will see the top four teams in each region meet to compete for the global title. The tournament is split up into two parts, with the group stage taking place from Monday to Wednesday, before the top two teams from each group progress to the three-day playoffs over the weekend.
Onto Group B, let’s take a look at the numbers that will drive the games starting on Monday.
The Teams
- SANDBOX Gaming
- Team oNe eSports
- Team Vitality
- DarkZero Esports
The clear favourites for this group are Team oNe and DarkZero Esports. Team oNe enter as the reigning Six Major champions, and are one of the clear favourites to defend their title. DarkZero, meanwhile, come off a somewhat weak Stage 3 into their first event with NA’s most successful player, Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski.
As for the underdogs, SANDBOX are the top-seeded APAC team with their brand new organization. And despite Team Vitality having no global experience, they are the only team in the world to have a positive head-to-head record against both Empire and BDS.
Between these four, DZ and oNe is the big rematch. Team oNe beat DarkZero twice during the SI 2021 group stage (7-2) and the Mexico Major quarter-final (7-3, 7-3). Team oNe also beat SANDBOX in SI 2021 (7-4), while DZ also beat SBXG in a very close match in the SI 2021 group stage (8-7).
The Players
The star players during Stage 3 from these teams are without a doubt Seongsoo "EnvyTaylor" Kim and Karl "Alem4o" Zarth, whose 15-7 and 21-11 entry records both topped their own regional leagues.
Nicolas "P4" Rimbaud, meanwhile, has been the standout player on Vitality for most of this year. However, he will be entering this event as one of the group’s three newbies to the global stage, alongside his teammates Medhi "Kaktus" Marty and Axel "Shiinka" Freisberg. Other than P4, his teammates all finished Stage 3 within a 0.04 Rating of each other, which is quite a rare occurrence.
Looking further down the table, DarkZero’s somewhat weaker Stage 3 meant that the team didn’t really have one player that particularly excelled, but they all hit mid-level Ratings.
One thing particularly of note is that while Tyler "Ecl9pse" McMullin spawned with the defuser during the vast majority of rounds, the plant statistics were all over the place, with each player getting a number of plants down -- something that’s not true for any of the other NAL rosters. Furthermore, while Canadian was SSG’s designated planter during the team’s peak and DZ’s designated hard-breach player, he got the least plants down in the team.
For oNe, Alem4o’s success has allowed the Mexico Major MVP Juliano "Levy" Andrade to drop down to a 1.04 SiegeGG Rating without suffering too much in results. This in part is due to KDS and Neskin swapping defensive roles.
KDS finished with the lowest Rating in Mexico on Jager, while Neskin finished the recent Copa Elite Six as the team’s top-rated player on the same operator.
Finally, while EnvyTaylor has been SANDBOX’s top player for the whole of this year, Stage 3 saw a particularly strong performance from Dongseon "SyAIL" Song, who jumped from a last to third to second place in the team by SiegeGG Rating. As the team’s Zofia/Jager main, this return to form seems pretty crucial to a good performance at a larger stage such as this.
The Maps
SANDBOX Gaming
Across both their seven-map APAC North season and 17 map Korean Open season, SANDBOX hasn’t touched Clubhouse or Chalet once and went to Coastline just near the beginning of the national campaign. Instead of these two picks, SANDBOX opted to go to Oregon seven times and Kafe four times during the Korean Open season, losing Oregon twice.
Oregon remained the team’s favourite map in the APAC North Division, while their one visit to Villa ended pretty dreadfully against GUTS and nearly cost them an auto-qualification place.
Team oNe
As with FaZe Clan in Group A, most of Stage 3 was just a seeding tournament for oNe, as they qualified for the Copa Elite Six on week three and then qualified for the Major after just four of the nine played maps at the CES.
This allows oNe to try out new strategies and try some strategic bans, meaning that the numbers below need to be taken with a pinch of salt.
Across their three prior maps, DZ and oNe met once each on Oregon, Villa, and Chalet. The map three that wasn’t played in Mexico was also Oregon, while the last map to be banned at SI21 was Villa, meaning we almost saw these two maps twice.
Considering oNe’s maps records, it seems like even six months on, these are still their go-to maps.
Team Vitality
Like Rogue in Group A, Vitality’s had a very strong offensive Stage 3, with the defensive win rate lagging behind on almost every map. This is a pattern we’ve seen across the whole of the EU League, but not as strong in the three other regions. It will be particularly interesting if this can continue at the Major or if the foreign defences can withstand their attacks better.
The lone map not played here is Kafe, which is their second most banned map, and hasn’t been played by them since Stage 1. Leading it in this metric is Coastline which saw a 81.8% ban rate.
Their only showings were a 5-7 loss to G2 during Stage 3 and a 4-7 loss against Secret during Stage 1. While the best-of-one format will allow them to avoid these two for now, should they make it to the playoffs, it is likely we’ll finally be able to see what Vitality has on these maps in a meaningful matchup.
DarkZero Esports
Continuing the look at the head-to-head, aside from losing Oregon, Villa and Chalet against oNe, DZ beat SBXG 8-7 on Kafe.
After losing Kafe twice 7-8 against NiP at the Mexico Major, DarkZero hasn’t gone back to Kafe. It was the most banned map against them over the last three months. Coastline, meanwhile, has been banned in all eight NAL games by DZ.
Also of interest is Oregon, which is once again one of the team’s most played maps. This is the case with all four teams here, while it was one of the least popular in Group A.
As ever, SiegeGG will be covering this tournament in full when it starts next week. For now, be sure to check out our pre-event coverage which includes interviews with the participating teams.