Image via Ubisoft
With a 2-0 victory over DWG KIA, Soniqs have punched their ticket to the upper bracket semifinals, and have secured a minimum of a top-six placement at the Six Invitational 2022. It was DWG KIA's first time to lose a series at this SI.
If the boxing term "styles make the fight" is anything to go by, this matchup was slated to be extremely close. Soniqs and DWG KIA have overlapping map pools in a lot of places, which made for some thrilling play on multiple maps. Pablo "Gryxr" Rebeil says that he was present in the map-ban phase, and DWG KIA might have been surprised by them taking Villa off the board in favor of Chalet. "As far as map pool to map pool goes ... we thought it was going to be a really close one."
Soniqs won Bank, but it did not come easy, not one bit. On map point, with DWG KIA threatening to push the map to overtime, Evan "Kanzen" Bushore clutched a one-vs-four situation to give Soniqs the thrilling map win.
The Rainbow Six Siege community is already calling it the play of the tournament.
"We always say as soon as he [Kanzen] gets that second kill in a clutch, that he's going to win the round," Gryxr said. "We always know that he's, like, going to start merking them."
Kanzen isolated his one-vs-ones with relative ease, got the first two kills in quick succession, and isolated the third player on the bomb chassis. He quick peeked the breach, found the final DWG KIA player on square stairs, and the rest is history.
This Soniqs team has preached a mantra all season long: always be learning, always be adapting. This ideology, or "ethos" as it's commonly referred to, has seemingly paid off in spades. Soniqs went from Seth "supr" Hoffman and the core of the old eUnited roster to one of the highest peaks of the Six Invitational.
"I'd be lying if I said it didn't [feel good]," Gryxr said. "We knew how good we were going into this event ... This is no shocker to us."
By the numbers, Gryxr is currently the best player in the tournament. He's at a 1.37 SiegeGG Rating over the course of the tournament, and leads the field in kill to death differential.
Up next, Soniqs will face Team Empire in a rematch of their group stage match, which Empire won 2-1.