Introducing the Siege Summer Series 2018!

The Siege Summer Series will see 8 invited teams from right across Europe play in a knockout tournament this coming weekend in the first tournament of its kind ran by the Ubisoft BeNeLux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg) admins

 

 

Meet the Teams Competing

Team Vitality

Roster - ZephiR, BiBoo, RaFaLe, Spark, BriD and BiOs (their coach)

Coming in as one of the favourites, the French team will be hoping to take the title after a series of 2nd place finishes at both the Coupe de France and DreamHack Valencia. Previously this season Vitality has yet to win against any of the other Pro League teams competing at this tournament and so will be hoping to make a show here as they come towards the Paris Major in 2 weeks time.

OrgLess

Roster - AceeZ, ripz, Vale, KS and Lazzo (their coach/sub)

Following a major fallout within the team which saw both PARAA and Hungry leave the team, OrgLess will be hoping to use this competition as a rare chance to practice with their new lineup outside of scrims before they compete in the dreaded “group of death” at the Paris Major. They do, however, have one thing going for them in the form of AceeZ who has managed to drop over ten kills in their last 4 Pro League games with a 2.2k/d across them.

Chaos

Roster - Secretly, REDGROOVE, sno0ken, Renuilz, Kripps and Syred (their coach)

Overall the Swedish roster of Chaos has had a disappointing year so far as they have won just two games in Pro League and have been knocked out in the first playoff round of both DreamHack tournaments. The team has however beaten some of the big guys during the OGA Pit tournament and, as they are the highest ranked team at this tournament that will not be attending the Paris Major, they will not be needing to “strat save” allowing them to play to the best of their ability to get the title.

 

DEUS Esport

Roster - JLn, Qujuqt, StrkR, Babuu, Slasher and Snaky

DEUS, this last weekend, competed at the Six Lounge Series #6 LAN Finals in Düsseldorf where they lost in straight maps against the Pro League team of OrgLess. We spoke to Qujuqt to discuss this game as well as their upcoming games at the Summer Series:

Can you tell us a bit about your team, for instance how the players came together and what your current roles are?

Well, actually we are 6 Players.
Julian "JLn" Hesel (Mainly Support/ Ancor)
Thomas "Babuu" Weigel  (Flex)
Jonas "Slasher" Schulze (Flex)
Brian "Strkr" Hildebrandt (Fragger)
Andreas "Qujuqt" Klein (Support / Ancor)
and as a Sub Player Klaudio "Snaky" Löw (Flex)

We changed the roster a few weeks ago when we recruited Strkr as new Player. Babu, JLn, Snaky and I are former PS4 Players and we play mainly on PC now for around the last 10 months. We know each other from PS4 competitive scene quite good and also teamed already on PS4 together. After the move to PC we met Slasher who later added his old mate Strkr to the team.

In the Final of the SLS will be against the Pro League team of OrgLess, the same team which you lost against during the last season of the SLS; how have you prepared for this game?

The match against OrgLess on LAN was an awesome experience. Even though we underperformed on LAN. We had a lot of small failures that cost us many rounds especially on our attacks. For Strkr and Slasher it was the first LAN experience overall which brought a lot of unconfidence to their mentality and playstyle. We are sure that the experience brought us a step forward as a team and that it will help us to be more confident in future LAN events. And of course, Orgless played a good game!

Your first game is against Team Vitality, the likely favourites to win the competition, how have you prepared for the competition?

As we are all playing the game from the very beginning we know that everything can happen in those games. Especially if you are the underdog, that we definitely will be in that game. Of course we know the playstyle of Team Vitality, since we all watch Pro League regularly. That may could help us in the game. Our preparation for the tournament is not special or different then for others. We will try to make our best and see it as a chance to gain a win against one of the best teams in the world or just to have a nice experience and a good practice! But we are very happy and thankful for the invitation to that tournament!

Finally, what are your predictions for this as a whole?

I don't have  a prediction for a winner yet. Regarding the internal problems of Orgless i think they probably will not make it, but still, they are one of the favourites for the title besides CHAOS and Team Vitality. But some time ago a wise guy told me to never underestimate your opponent. So i think we all can stay excited for the winning team.

T3H eSports

Roster - Oraghon, PrydzZ, aRanioN, SirBoss and Kivvi (their coach)

Following the departure of pannari stating he “just needs a break” T3H are currently down a player and so a replacement can be expected to be revealed in the next few days. Furthermore, considering the German roster of OrgLess just lost two players and T3H contains two of the best German players in R6, Oraghon and aRanioN, the future of this team could be seen as in doubt. However at the moment the team stands as one of the top Challenger League teams in Europe and so will be aiming to show that the current roster can compete and beat some of the best teams in Pro League.

Trust Gaming

Roster - Craxan, Snuf, Leonski, Avaiche, Aizy, Deapek, oVie and Anthony (their 2 coaches)

Hailing from the BeNeLux region itself, Trust Gaming is a majority Dutch team which won the BeNeLux League Season 1 fairly confidently before also winning the BYOC qualifier at DreamHack Valencia to make it to the main event. Here they drew an incredibly difficult group, which involved them playing against PENTA Sports on the main stage, which they ultimately came last in. They will be going in as an underdog team with a significant fan following that will hopefully spur them on to an eventual victory.

 

EnD Gaming

Roster - Alation, Peak, Torok, Hunter, Fratelli and Boroz (their coach)

The full Italian team recently won the ESL Italia Summer Championship dropping just 2 maps across the entire 3 month long tournament and almost made it to the knockouts of the DreamHack Valencia event before losing 2-0 against PENTA Sports. Last season EnD competed in the Challenger League in which they were also just one victory away from playoffs. As another team with so many close results they'll be hoping that this is their chance to make it all the way in a Europe wide competition.

Sous-Marin

Roster - BadTrak, PrimaL, Quaal, Undead and Eaqz

As a relatively unknown French roster the team has in the last month achieved quite allot; firstly they qualified for the main event at DreamHack Valencia beating the two Spanish teams of G-Lab Addicts and Wild Gaming to come joint 3rd in the BYOC qualifier before beating the like of Moti On Gaming and PlanetKey Dynamics to qualify for Season 8 of Challenger League just a week later. The team will be hoping to add this tournament onto their list of upsets as they play OrgLess in the first round.

 

Who will they play?

The teams have been seeded and the following knockout bracket produced:

The tournament will, with 3 Pro League teams, 2 Challenger League teams and 3 up-and-coming teams representing 5 separate countries, meet a scale not seen by Ubisoft in Europe outside of Pro and Challenger League tournaments and so we spoke to Esports and Brand manager of Ubisoft BeNeLux, “MainstreamMilan” to discuss this as well as to get his predictions for the tournament:

To start, can you introduce yourself to the readers?

My name is Milan van Valkenhoef, and I am Esports & Brand Manager at Ubisoft. I am Brand Manager of games like Rainbow Six Siege, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and The Division 2. I am responsible for all marketing activities for these games (Events, Social Media, TV campaigns, online campaigns, stuff like that) plus  all Ubisoft Esports activities in Benelux.

I try to build a big Benelux scene by organizing Rainbow Events on many levels (BeNeLux League for the best players and Go4s for everyone), but I also organize Rainbow Events at other LAN parties so there are a lot of moments where players can play competitive Rainbow Six Siege. I also try to be as active as possible in the community and I mostly discuss all decisions with the players before changing anything.

Previously you have just run tournaments for the BeNeLux region, what made you decide to do a Europe wide tournament this time?

There are a few reasons why we organize this cup:

• We changed the Twitch name from Ubisoftnl to Rainbow6BNL, so we wanted to start with a big stream to let everyone know that we changed the name. The reason we changed it is that we only stream Rainbow and that we stream in English and people did not understand that as the name said NL.

• Have content in a quiet period on our Twitch Channel (last BeNeLux League finished in June, the next one will start in September probably)

• Give BeNeLux teams the chance to play against better teams in a real tournament. For now we just choose to go with Trust Gaming as they are the only team that have had a steady line-up for the last months and play on a high level. Hopefully in future events we can invite more BeNeLux teams as these teams will of course always have the focus for me.

How did you decide on which teams to invite?

First, we checked how many BeNeLux teams have a steady line-up and have the level of play to play against these big teams. I hope to organize a tournament that will showcase some high-level matches, so inviting BeNeLux teams just because they are from BeNeLux wouldn’t make sense to me personally.

After we contacted the BeNeLux team Trust Gaming, I started contacting the Pro League teams first as they have the biggest organizations and the best players. Besides the Pro League teams, I also contacted the teams that I personally know and that play at a decent level. All Pro League teams were enthusiastic about the idea and all of them wanted to play, unfortunately, not all of them could play because of different reasons. But it was good to know, they at least liked the idea of it.

So in short:

• I start with the Benelux Teams that have the skill to compete against the good teams and have a steady line up

• I contact EU PL teams

• I contact teams that I personally know and play at a decent enough level.

What are your predictions for the event?

I think, and mostly hope, all matches will be close matches. I also hope for at least one surprising result. The Pro League teams are of course the favourites to win, but I think some of the other teams can really surprise the Pro teams if they have a good day and did their homework well.

So normally, I would say Vitality is going to win, but who knows. Maybe one of the teams will surprise us!

Finally, can you share any plans for future events?

The main focus for the coming year is to keep on creating moments for people to play or watch Rainbow Six Siege. We are talking to LAN parties like The Reality and Lantastic to organize Rainbow Six tournaments at their events.

We also keep organizing the online BeNeLux Go4, so that means every Thursday evening there are weekly cups (most of the time casted by Hap at twitch.tv/Hap_r6) plus a monthly final every first Tuesday of the month (casted by Hap as well).

But the biggest part of our Esports strategy is of course the BeNeLux League. The qualifiers will probably start in September, the League will be in October and November. The offline finals will be on a big stage at a really big event (+20k visitors, which is huge for a Dutch event). More info about that event will probably be announced coming weeks. So the huge difference between the first and second season of the Benelux League will be the offline final, it will be way bigger than Season 1. Besides the bigger final we will of course try to get better streams during the season and the format will probably change a bit because of the new format during the matches.

Where can you watch the games?

The tournament will take place on the 4th and 5th of August from 2PM CEST streamed straight from the rainbow6bnl Twitch account and casted in English by Stijn “Hap” Hapers and Thiadrik “Toldersma” Oldersma.