Next week, the Six Jönköping Major will see the top 16 teams meet to compete for a global title. The tournament is split up into two parts, with the group stage taking place from Monday to Wednesday, before the top two teams from each group progress to the three-day playoffs over the weekend.
TSM
The reigning world champions are back with two new players. While dropping Emilio "Geometrics" Leynez and Brady "Chala" Davenport was a controversial move at the time, Nick "Snake" Janis and Keegan "Gasher" Slovensky’s introductions have led them to win an NAL stage for the first time.
While Gasher slotted in as a simple Chala replacement on the hard breach role, Snake has somewhat interrupted the usual Jason "Beaulo" Doty and Bryan "Merc" Wrzek duo, as he hit 14 opening kills to five opening deaths while on Iana. Beaulo went 15-8 on Zofia, while Merc went 17-11 on Ash. These are three very capable and aggressive fraggers which, assuming they can also perform outside of the NAL, gives TSM a level of pure firepower not seen in any other roster.
And this is where TSM’s strengths have always been. Matthew "Achieved" Solomon provides the supportive core of the roster and use that base as a platform to get aggressive. It’s a very similar setup to BDS on the macro scale, with Stéphane "Shaiiko" Lebleu and Loïc "BriD" Chongthep’s core.
If you dismiss the Mexico Major where TSM played with a substitute, the team has finished in first, fourth, third, and first place in global tournaments, winning SI 22 and DreamHack Montreal 2019. Quite like Team Liquid, the act of qualifying for Majors has always been their biggest obstacle and a deep run looks very likely every time they actually get to an event.
Team Liquid
While Liquid have arguably been a tournament favourite in every event they’ve attended since 2017, arguments for them look even stronger now than usual.
After a semi-final exit to the eventual champions in Charlotte, they brought on the Mexico Major-winning in-game-leader, Lorenzo "Lagonis" Volpi, to lead the team. They now have arguably LATAM’s best IGL, the two best fraggers, and the best soft breach player, with Gabriel "AsK" Santos well outperforming expectations during the most recent BR6 stage.
Prior to this, they also finished as runners-up at SI 2021 and in the semi-finals of the Mexico Major. These two results, plus a fifth-sixth exit at SI 2022 all came at the hands of Brazilian opponents, as they’ve always performed better globally than domestically.
With all this in mind, anything but a playoff run would be an utter disaster for Liquid, but it’s hard to find any reason why they shouldn’t hit this goal.
In order to qualify for the Major, Liquid finished second in the BR6 and CES tournaments, behind w7m in both. However, they notably beat FaZe Clan, who were a single round from becoming two-times Major champions three months ago on three occasions and had an aggregate map result of 5-1.
Lagonis is here to win titles and Liquid are on that path at this Major.
SANDBOX Gaming
Across this team’s three Six Invitational, three Six Major, and singular Pro League Finals result, SANDBOX have gone out last four times and been second-to-last twice. Their only definitively strong performance came at the Sweden Major a year ago.
This tournament was somewhat fascinating as no one on SANDBOX had good SiegeGG Ratings and they had the two worst players by opening kills in the tournament. Instead, they got by due to completely dominating Team Vitality (now known as Wolves) as they won 14 out of the 18 played rounds. This got them six of their nine points and won them their head-to-head to finish in second place.
As such, it is possible this result wasn’t due to an elevated SANDBOX but due to a very favourable individual matchup. It is very unlikely they’ll find a similar matchup against Liquid or TSM, which looks to be their downfall at this upcoming Major.
The team itself looked very promising in Berlin thanks to the introduction of Hwang "Arukaze" Hyeon-jin, a rookie player. He was the best performer in APAC North with a 1.34 Rating during Stage 2, but he could not replicate that form in Berlin and had a 0.92 Rating there. But in Stage 3 in APAC North, he ended with a 0.90 Rating -- the worst on his team and 10th-lowest in the North Division.
Arukaze isn’t the team’s only issue. Song "SyAIL" Dong-seon, the team’s dedicated Ash player, ended Stage 3 with fewer kills than Han "Static" Chan-yong on Thermite. He himself was the third-worst player by SiegeGG Rating on any pure fragging operator -- Iana, Zofia, Ash, or Nokk.
If SANDBOX’s star fraggers can’t get their numbers up against Korean and Japanese opponents, it seems unlikely they’ll be able to do so against the world’s best. It becomes even worse when their opponents include Benjamin "Benjamaster" Dereli, Luccas "Paluh" Molina, André "nesk" Oliveira, Beaulo, and Merc.
Heroic
The last time Heroic played at this stage, they were arguably just very unlucky. They finished last in their group, but were only two points away from the quarter-finals. Their opponents were eventual champions DarkZero Esports, G2 Esports, who made back-to-back quarter-finals, and w7m Esports, who made the semi-finals in Berlin.
Now, they’ve brought in Maxime "Meloo" Cahagnet and Marc "jume" Steinmann ahead of the Jönköping Major.
Jume is one of European tier-two’s most well travelled players and he did well in the EUL, but he was not as outstanding as some of the other new additions. On an entry Iana role, he finished with a plus four opening differential and a 1.09 SiegeGG Rating. He also had the second-highest number of defuser plants.
It’s instead been Benjamaster that excelled with a 1.16 Rating, the fifth best in the league, with the joint-best entry differential, and fourth-best kill differential. While Benjamaster has always excelled on Heroic, this was never as apparent as during Stage 2, where his 1.22 EUL Rating was followed up with a 1.05 Rating for his closest teammate.
There is definitely promise in this roster that is worth a playoff appearance, but once again Heroic may have got a particularly hard group.
Heads-to-heads
TSM have played Liquid a number of times. Most recently, they beat them 2-0 during the SI 2022 upper-bracket semi-finals on Chalet and Bank, while each team won one map each 7-4 at the in Mexico Major; Villa went to Liquid while Consulate went to TSM. Notably, Liquid won this group while TSM came last.
Going back even further, Liquid beat TSM 2-1 during the SI 2021 lower bracket semi-finals to knock the last remaining non-LATAM team out of the tournament, while their very first meeting ended 2-1 to TSM during the DreamHack Montreal 2019 grand-final.
This Paluh vs Beaulo head-to-head has become one of the biggest in Siege and we’ll get to see them play at least twice next week.
Meanwhile, during his time playing for G2, Heroic’s Aleksi "UUNO" Työppönen knocked TSM out of the Raleigh Major quarter-finals, 2-0, as TSM were the last non-EU team to exit this tournament as well.
UUNO also beat SANDBOX (then known as Cloud9) 7-5 during the SI 2021 groups but lost to Liquid 3-7 at the same tournament. Liquid also beat Cloud9 here, 7-4. Finally, at DHM19, Liquid beat UUNO in the groups 2-1.
Players & teams to watch
The Liquid vs TSM match is a must-watch for so many reasons; the history between the teams, a look at the new players, a possible grand-final preview, and the fact that this is TSM’s first time back at this stage since they lifted the Six Invitational cabre.
While not to simplify the matchup too much, Paluh’s performance in high stakes games have fluctuated a lot previously and he may still be Liquid’s key to winning it if he can hold his own against TSM’s trio of fraggers.
Individually, Heroic’s Jume, Liquid’s new IGL, and Snake for TSM are all the key difference makers for their respective teams even though two are also rookies.