Image via Ubisoft
Next week, the Six Invitational will see the top 20 teams meet to compete for the global title. The tournament is split up into two parts, with the group stage taking place from Tuesday to Saturday, before the top four teams from each group progress to the six-day playoffs the following week.
Group C
While it is the only group without a recent Major winner, Group C is a lineup of the biggest names in R6 esports.
BDS and TSM include two of the best-known names in R6 -- Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu and Jason "Beaulo" Doty -- who both have yet to play in an international grand final. FURIA, meanwhile, includes up-and-coming Diogo "Fntzy" Lima; Brazil’s biggest breakout name in a year that was defined by remarkable Brazilian performances. Finally, DarkZero now includes the greatest players in NA and EU history, Troy "Canadian" Jaroslawski and Niclas "Pengu" Mouritzen, albeit the latter in content creation roles.
The one odd one out in this regard is Elevate, an organization that will be attending their first Invitational since they lifted the title back in 2017 with a completely new roster to this tier of play. All five Elevate players have never played outside of APAC before.
While Elevate has never played any of their opponents before, we have seen almost every other meeting of these five teams, barring FURIA vs TSM.
TSM currently holds a 4-1 map lead over BDS, however, trails DZ 13-11 on all-time maps. DZ themselves trails BDS 3-4 and FURIA 1-2. Finally, BDS vs FURIA is a 5-1 to BDS with three meetings in just the last year.
Let’s take a deeper dive at the numbers that will drive these upcoming games:
#flag@20:fr Team BDS
Except Stage 2, 2021 BDS has finished in the top two in every European regional tournament since the EUL began almost two years ago. As well as this, across their four global tournaments they’ve finished in the top eight twice -- SI 2020 and the Sweden Major -- and the top four twice -- SI 2021 and the Mexico Major.
With the lone exception of NiP, no team has been as consistent in its performance as BDS. Unfortunately, for them, they’re consistently falling short. They are still yet to crack into the top two on the global stage, something that feels inevitable as the world-class duo of Shaiiko and Loïc "BriD" Chongthep -- arguably the world’s best fragger and support player, respectively -- are a force unlike many others to face.
Quantifying their prowess, Shaiiko hit EUL SiegeGG Ratings of 1.42 and 1.38 during Stages 2 and 3 topping the European leaderboard, numbers that were matched only by Matthew "Hotancold" Stevens during Stage 3 and Sanghoon "yass" Yoo during Stage 2.
During 2021’s global tournaments, Shaiiko did drop down to 0.93, 1.28, and 1.17 Ratings with the highest coming during their semi-final exit in Mexico. During both the top-eight finishes it was notably BriD who stood up, leading the team at SI 2021 and sitting just behind Shaiiko in Sweden despite playing hard support roles.
While BriD is undoubtedly vital, Ratings wise he usually trails his fellow teammates regionally, however, can really show up on the LAN environment. Whenever Shaiiko’s numbers dip, BriD pulls double-time to put up some of the highest support and frag-centered numbers to keep his team in it.
On a normal day, BDS is a top-10 team but when both Shaiiko and BriD are firing on all cylinders BDS has silverware within their grasp. France won the Pro League in 2016 and a Minor in 2018, now four years on they are ready, and able to take a much bigger prize home.
#flag@20:th Elevate
Elevate is the biggest wildcard in this entire tournament. While all five players are new to this level of play, they are also regional titans. They claimed the APAC title nine months ago, and have been the “final boss” of APAC Playoffs since.
For those uninitiated with the team, Elevate’s top-rated player and primary fragger is Sumate "Nay..Pew" Srimabut who across the three APAC South stages hit Ratings of 1.22, 1.21, and 1.18. While not Shaiiko-tier numbers, he has been consistently hitting these numbers in APAC South and is trailed very closely by both Paramin "sprOnigiri" Suwanwattana and Siwa "Nerix" Kaewtossapone, the latter of which only joined in September.
Outside of APAC South, this order somewhat breaks down with sprOnigiri taking the lead during the Stage 2 Playoffs and Pew dropping down to third during Stage 3.
In both of these tournaments, Elevate lost the winners’ final 0-2 and the losers’ final in a very close 1-2 result. Wins in any of these four games would’ve sent the Thai roster to their first-ever Major and yet on all four occasions, it slipped through their fingers.
Looking at these games, in all four cases Nay..Pew got completely wiped out with Ratings of 1.03, 0.96, 1.03, and 0.66. While the whole team achieved similar performances, this shows just how hard Elevate’s top fragger was being neutered stopping the team at their lead.
Considering the likes of Chiefs and iG from APAC South were able to do this, Elevate is gonna have a tough time in a group with so many unstoppable fraggers. Nay..Pew will have to prove he can compete head-to-head with Beaulo, Shaiiko, and Fntzy if Elevate wants to exit this group which is a close to impossible task for any player to achieve.
#flag@20:us DarkZero Esports
Back in 2019, DZ achieved their best finish to date when they lost to NAVI in the Season 10 Pro League Finals. Two years on, and they’ve replaced four out of five players and have slipped backward finishing the four global finals since finishing top six, top 14, top six, and then again most recently top 14.
The first-round exit at the Sweden Major is the most disappointing result as it came off the back of Canadian’s return to the game as he was heralded as DZ’s answer to earning NA’s third Six Invitational title. This event also saw SSG, Canadian’s old squad, and the home of two ex-DZ players lead the region as NA’s only team to make the playoffs
Now, they approach SI22 off the back of a silver medal finals at the NAL Finals, DZ finds themself in a position they are very used to. On paper, they have everything they need to succeed; a proven world-class IGL in Canadian, a solid fragging duo of Nick "njr" Rapier and Paul "Hyper" Kontopanagiotis, Roberto "Panbazou" Feliciano working well on entry, and Tyler "Ecl9pse" McMullin as the primary support player. The pieces just aren’t working together yet.
While every player has shown that they can perform and it’s good not to be too reliant on one player, DZ’s last year has seen everyone but Canadian lead the team by frags and rating as the various player rose up and down on performance.
Hyper peaked at a 1.29 Rating during Stage 2, Mexico saw njr hit 1.22, Ecl9pse hit 1.17 during Stage 1 while the two fraggers peaked at 1.04, and the NAL Finals had Panbazou on 1.19 while njr sat at 0.97.
Obviously, not every player can be hitting the big numbers, but consistency is the key. This type of revolving-door performance isn’t something we really see from any of the other top teams. Paluh, Shaiiko, muzi, Hotancold, and Alem4o can be trusted to top their team at almost every event. The same cannot be said for njr.
On the upside, DZ has now had six months with Canadian and the NAL Finals seem to show a Panbazou we hadn’t seen before. Now their next goal is to not finish last in the group stage again to challenge for at least another top-eight finish.
#flag@20:br FURIA Esports
After fighting to survive relegations in 2020, FURIA added just two players last March and has been one of the most promising rosters since.
As well as maintaining a solid fourth-place position in the BR6 League and besting the likes of FaZe and Liquid to qualify for Majors, the team was knocked out of both SI 2021 and the Mexico Major by BDS to finish top ten and top six respectively. Most recently the team fell hard at the Sweden Major earning just four points against SSG, DWG, and Empire.
Fntzy has increasingly become a name to watch since he joined the team back in March, increasing from a 1.09 Rating during Stage 1, to 1.11 in Stage 2, and 1.17 at the Mexico Major, only to hit a massive 1.33 Rating during Stage 3. As well as breaking the best-of-one Rating record, this Stage rating even beat Paluh’s 1.30 count, a remarkable achievement.
This kill count allowed the rest of FURIA to somewhat regress, hitting ratings between 0.9 and 0.97. While Fntzy’s hitting Shaiiko-tier numbers, he doesn’t have his teammates in support like Shaiiko has BriD.
A good example of this is in Stage 2, during which Luiz "Miracle" Abrantes secured the most clutches in the BR6 League on support operators. During Stage 3 he fell to fourth on his team with a +0 kill differential.
This change led FURIA to rely on more clutches during Stage 3 while getting down fewer plants. A month later, at the Six Sweden Major, Fntzy was unable to perform, He was out fragged by his counterparts: Hotancold, yass, and JoyStiCK. Finishing with a 1.04 Rating FURIA finished last in their group while the three other LATAM rosters topped their own groups.
While the whole roster has been seemingly retooled to help Fntzy frag out, this only works when he is the best fragger on the server. If he can be shut down as NiP did incredibly effectively during the BR6 Finals just last month, the team is dead in the water. With opponents like Shaiiko and Beaulo, this may be another tough group stage for FURIA.
#flag@20:us TSM FTX
Finally, we have TSM. They’re of the best-known teams in R6, and they’ve had a very bad year.
After a third-place finish at SI 2020 followed by fourth place at SI 2021 sandwiching a year of top-two domestic performances, the team’s results fell hard during the 2021 Season. After a last-place exit at the Mexico Major, TSM then failed to qualify for the Sweden Major and NAL Finals with Rogue beating them to the final SI invite.
Luckily the team managed to best Parabellum to the NA qualifier spot in what was the first game we had seen them play on-stream since a loss to Mirage in the NAL last October.
So while we don’t have many games to go by, the question that inevitably poses itself is what happened to TSM?
Well while SI 2020 and SI 2021, TSM’s two good results, saw Beaulo top the team with Ratings of 1.18 and 1.16, during the NAL he’s fallen down to fifth, third, and third on his team while Matthew "Achieved" Solomon, in particular, has excelled. While playing with a stand-in, the Six Mexico Major saw a similar story as Achieved led the team on the international stage also.
Losing the team’s top fragger is clearly an issue, however, TSM somewhat leaned into it while at SI 2021. Beaulo was the team’s primary fragger and second entry player, by Stage 3 Achieved had those roles while Beaulo played on Ace.
As the results show this didn’t really pay off with a fifth-place NAL finish almost costing them three LAN appearances. Four months later it seems like they’ve realized this as Beaulo competed in last weekend’s NA SI qualifier as the main entry player and back on the roles he inhabited at SI 2021. Behind him: Achieved, just like old times.
It seems like, at least against the likes of Parabellum, the old TSM has returned just in time.
2022’s Six Invitational will kick off in just over a week on February 8th. Be sure to check out more of our pre-tournament coverage on our hub page for the tournament.