(Banner image: Ubisoft/João Ferreira)
After two days of action at the Sweden Major, Spacestation Gaming is controlling their own destiny in the group of death.
It hasn’t always looked pretty or clean, but Spacestation is currently tied with DWG KIA atop group D.
After a barnburner 7-8 overtime loss to FURIA to open the tournament, Spacestation started off on the back foot in the first two rounds in its game against Team Empire. Without any hyperbole at all, the results of those first two rounds were something Rainbow Six might never see again.
On the first round, Alec Fultz aced and netted a one vs four round win in the process. That result alone is unlikely. Nathanial “Rampy” Duvall one upped Fultz with a one vs five for the ages.
Rampy didn’t kill all five, but he killed the right four.
“When I saw Rampy get put in that one vs five, as soon as I saw he got those first two kills, I just had this weird feeling that he was going to go back-to-back with me,” said Fultz in a Ubisoft-organized press conference.
“It’s like lightning striking twice,” added Rampy, speaking about Empire’s ability to execute and how rare it is to pull off a clutch on the Russian side.
The clutches proved to ultimately be the deciding factor in the game. Spacestation went up 5-1 following the conclusion of its defending half, netting just enough attacking rounds to beat Empire in regulation 7-5.
Day two held a mirror result. Spacestation fell in overtime to DWG KIA in its first game of the day and then, once again, raced out to exactly a 5-1 defending half, then held on against FURIA’s attack to win 7-5.
Spacestation’s games have been tense, each of them has come down to the final round in regulation or a winner-take-all overtime round.
“There’s not a lot of tilt factor in the team,” said Alex “Skys” Magor when asked how Spacestation maintains composure. “Like, no one ever gets mad. When we’re down rounds, when we lose a round we shouldn’t, never does anyone get down or blame somebody else.”
Spacestation controls its own destiny heading into the final day of groups, something no other North American team can say. It’s been a down event for NA overall — Soniqs and DarkZero didn’t win a game until today and didn’t look particularly good in their losses either.
“I think we worry about ourselves and the other teams do what they do,” said Skys when asked if NA’s poor results added pressure to the region’s best-performing team. “The narrative is that NA is falling off, or whatever. We don’t care about that. We’re going to focus on ourselves and keep improving as a team any way we can. If people want to make that narrative, they can, but that’s not our narrative.”
If Spacestation defeats Empire tomorrow in a rematch of one of their max-regulation winning games, they’re in the playoffs.