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 D
After previously looking at Groups A, B, and C, finally, we have D in which all five teams have a lot going for them with Team oNe being the undeniable stars as SI22’s top-seeded roster.
This is as oNe comes in as a recent Six Major titleholder, albeit a somewhat shaky one. After being just one round from falling to CAG during the group stages in Mexico, the roster led by Karl "Alem4o" Zarth completed their run to claim their whole title. Since then, Rogue knocked them out of the Sweden Major, and they exited in the first round of the BR6 Finals.
Next up, both NAVI and Oxygen are their respective region’s Stage 1 champions and finished the year in third place. MIBR meanwhile has been rocked by illnesses and injuries all year, however, did finish Stage 1 of the Elite Six in second, SI2021 in third, and the recent BR6 Finals in third once again, beating oNe in the quarter-finals.
Finally, we have DWG, arguably one of the very best teams in the world right now. After besting the recent World Champions, NiP, to a quarter-final finish in Mexico, the team was then the only non-LATAM roster to top their group in Sweden ahead of SSG and Empire. Here they came within a single round of knocking out the eventual champions of FaZe in the semi-finals.
Between them, oNe and DWG make up two of the four group winners in Sweden as well as half of all teams that qualified for both the Mexico and Sweden playoffs (alongside BDS and SSG).
Looking at head-to-heads, only two of these matchups have happened previously with MIBR currently 3-3 in maps against oNe over the last year, as well as 3-0 up against OxG.
It is very hard to predict who will top this group or who will come out on bottom, so let’s take a look at each of the teams in turn.
#flag@20:br Team oNe eSports
The star player from oNe has always been Alem4o with him hitting SiegeGG Ratings of 1.23, 1.25, and 1.22 in each stage of the BR6 League, and 1.09, 1.16, and 1.35 during 2021’s three global tournaments. These numbers meant he topped the team in every one of these tournaments with the exception of the Six Mexico Major.
During Mexico, it was the event’s eventual MVP, Juliano "Levy" Andrade, who overtook Alem4o by 0.01 rating points. He achieved a tournament-saving performance to push oNe over the edge to the title.
Since then, he dropped back during the online tournaments, but the Sweden Major saw him hit a 1.20 Rating as he steps up when required.
Also of particular note from oNe’s Major winning run was the team’s primary entry Iana/Jager player, Eduardo "KDS" Fontes, who achieved the worst rating on the team at 0.98. Compared to his counterparts KDS was definitely the odd one out as he seemed to struggle to get the required picks that are expected of him in those roles.
In the three months following this, KDS relinquished the Jager role to Caio "Neskin" Szazi who excelled particularly during the Elite Six Cup where he topped the team on both rating and entry engagements.
While we only saw oNe play for one series during the BR6 Finals, this change persisted as the team spread around the frag-orientated operators.
While oNe was a flash of brilliance at the Mexico Major, the roster has been trying to fine-tune out their issues since to get back to this level.
With so much success already, it’s easy to forget that Team oNe is still less than a year old and that most of the players only began their pro-tier careers in 2020. A lot of learning and adapting is still possible which they’ve been trying to hit over the last six months.
#flag@20:us Oxygen Esports
Oxygen has had a hectic year with their NAL placements going from first to sixth and then recovering to second. Across this same period, they finished SI 2021 in top six place but then exited the Sweden Major with just one win six months later.
Ignoring the latter tournament in which Anthony "HOP3Z" Nizzardo was forced to stand in, Oxygen has seen a very varied set of performances across the team. The three NAL Stages and SI 2021 had Leonardo "Kyno" Figueiredo, Evan "Yoggah" Nelson, Gabriel "LaXInG" Mirelez, and Franklyn "VertcL" Cordero each top their team with three different players coming last.
Across this time, the team’s five unchanged players have also remained in fairly static roles. This uniformity is helped by the most consistent player being the team’s captain, Davide "FoxA" Bucci. As well as coming second in three of these tournaments, he’s also the team’s primary planter and hard breacher, making him the backbone of the roster.
As of Stage 3 the team had a small switch up in roles as Kyno moved away from Thermite and Ace that he had played all year onto more fragging capable operators such as Sledge and Zofia. Yoggah, the team’s old Zofia player, in turn, moved onto Ace. While they did improve on their Stage 2 result, with FoxA not attending the Sweden Major it's hard to say just how effective this move was.
This change partially stuck during their 1-2 NAL semi-final loss against the Soniqs, so it’s unclear what roles these two will be on at SI 2022 as they’ve probably been experimenting with this over the last three months.
#flag@20:gb Natus Vincere
NAVI, a British roster, has been on somewhat of a freefall after going from first place in Stage 1 to third in Stage 2 and then way down to eighth in Stage 3. During this time they attended just one LAN event as they exited the Mexico Major without a win before earning a notable third-place finish at the EUL Finals after beating G2 2-1.
During this time, the Swedish player Secretly has been struggling the most as he hit ratings of 0.86, 0.90, and 0.82 in the EUL, 0.77 at the Mexico Major, and 0.96 across their two EU Finals games. These are numbers matched by just Soniqs’ Seth "supr" Hoffman across the whole of SI 2022 and positions him as the statistical weak link in the roster.
Since Mexico, the team has seemingly responded to this as Secretly moved into a greater support role as the main planter, a role which Nathan had inhabited previously.
Szymon "Saves" Kamieniak performs as the team’s flex player and has stood up over the last six months while other players faltered. During the EU Finals he led the team while he overtook Blurr into second place during Stage 3.
Finally, at the top end of the team, Doki and Blurr excelled during Stages 1 and 2 with ratings of 1.24, 1.23, 1.19, and 1.18 between them. During the team’s low point in Mexico and Stage 3, Blurr dropped right down to a 0.83 Rating leading in part to their poor performances.
This drop-down from Blurr was responded to with an outstanding Stage from Doki to keep his team competitive. With 108 kills he was just one shy of the top fragger, Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu, while also earning the most entry kills during Stage 3.
This is the Doki we saw back in 2019 during NAVI’s peak and one that can cause real chaos to even the best teams. If Blurr can help him out as we saw during Stage 1, Saves keep up his recent rise in performance, and Secretly and Nathan put up a solid support play between them, NAVI should be able to escape a global group stage for the first time ever and make a deeper run through the event.
#flag@20:kr DAMWON KIA
With a quarterfinals and semi-finals finish in the last two Six Majors, respectively, DWG only sits as one of the lower-seeded teams due to a very bad Stage 1. This saw them finish in seventh place out of eight teams as the roster had only been formed 12 days before the Stage began.
With time the Korean side has been getting better and better, coming within a single round of eliminating the eventual champions of FaZe at the Sweden Major. Now they enter SI 2022 as arguably a tournament favorite, the first time an APAC team can realistically claim that to be the case.
Without a doubt, the biggest driver of these results has been Sanghoon "yass" Yoo who has hit some of the highest statistics in the world this year. After hitting Ratings of 1.35 during Stage 2 and 1.41 during Stage 3, yass kept up this performance in Sweden with a 1.35 Rating -- the highest in the tournament. As well as this, he also reached a 22-9 entry record and secured 1.11 kills-per-round which smashed the next best KPRs of 1.04 and 1.02.
This means yass, a player who was dropped from the last-placed SCARZ roster during the 2020 Season, is now in line with the likes of Matthew "Hotancold" Stevens, Luccas "Paluh" Molina, and Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu as R6’s best fraggers.
To support yass comes the team’s main entry player, Byeonguk "RIN" Jang, the flexes of Sewoong "CATsang" Heo and Jinwook "Woogiman" Park, and the hard breach and primary defuser-carrier, SungJoon "coted" Jo.
It’s this last player who has seen the most growth over the year as while coted was the team’s lowest-rated player during Stage 2 even behind the substitute of Minseong "RoyBoy" Koo, by Sweden he was third on the team with the second most plants in the tournament.
Woogiman, meanwhile, both began and ended the year playing Maverick but has had more success on operators such as Nomad and Lion. DWG is still the yass show but unlike some similar teams, he actually has the backup and flexibility behind him.
Within six months of formation, DWG had already risen to be APAC’s best team with them tying APAC’s best-ever finish at a Major just three months after that. Now three months since we last saw DWG play who knows where this team’s at.
#flag@20:br MIBR
Finally, we have MIBR who’ve had a very rough year.
After the MIBR organization won the BR6 2020 title and the newly acquired MIBR roster finished third at SI 2021, they had very high hopes for the 2021 Season. Unfortunately, Stage 1 saw Luca "LuKid" Sereno and Matheus "Budega" Figueiredo both tested positive for covid-19 leading the team’s star player to miss two of the nine games.
While they still managed a third-place finish, Stage 2 then saw them finish last with just four points after Felipe "FelipoX" De Lucia was forced to play using a controller following shoulder surgery.
Finally, Stage 3 saw no absences which allowed them to earn a massive 19 points putting them tied with Liquid in second place. Despite this, the team then fell in a shock best-of-one result against Atheris during the playoffs which, along with losses to Liquid and FURIA, meant they failed to qualify for the Major.
This means MIBR has effectively missed the LATAM boom that their counterparts on oNe, FaZe, and NiP has basked in. It also means that in the last year we’ve had very few full-strength games from MIBR to analyze.
What’s extremely clear throughout all these issues, however, is how good LuKid is as the team’s primary fragger and Kaique "Faallz" Moreira is as the hard support player. They both have topped the team multiple times and are usually together in first and second on the leaderboard with them ending the LATAM qualifier with 1.18 and 1.31 Ratings respectively.
Third at SI 2021 shows what MIBR is capable of. This combined with them missing Mexico and Sweden and the sheer prowess of Brazil currently means they’re a real underdog story waiting to happen.