Image via Ubisoft
While all of APAC’s eyes focused on DWG coming into day one of the Six Invitational, their fellow Koreans with SANDBOX Gaming began the day with a remarkable win over the Brazilian team Ninjas in Pyjamas.
While the result was a 2-1, the year of Brazilian dominance meant that any loss, even a somewhat close one, was still a surprise from the NiP squad.
To achieve this result, Chanyong "Static" Han stated that despite the lack of support staff, the roster had been VOD reviewing the team each night and scrimmaged against several other LATAM teams over the last couple of days, allowing them to get used to the aggressive playstyle.
This practice led them to win the series by scoring 7-4 scorelines during maps one and three. Static stated, “...We doubt that NiP was such an easy opponent. We were surprised because it wasn't surprisingly difficult," per a SiegeGG translator. It’s a strong statement that could worry their future opponents.
As for map two which SANDBOX had lost 7-3, Static stated that NiP excelled here at taking advantage of small mistakes on SB’s offensive half while on their defenses their positioning fell apart too. The team only managed to win one out of their six defensive rounds here, which marks a clear departure from their performance across the rest of the series.
Due to this, Seongsoo "EnvyTaylor" Kim emphasized the need for the team to “brainstorm, talk over and just improve on those points that we failed to do well” as a way to focus and improve before their upcoming games and to ensure they don’t get too “lazy or complacent”.
Looking forward, SANDBOX’s next matchup will be against the British MNM Gaming roster. After beating the reigning SI champions, the recent EU Challenger League victors may be seen as an easy target, however, Static spoke highly of them.
“It seems like [MNM’s] playstyle is quite like ours when it comes to operators or positioning” he stated, however, he was confident SANDBOX can come out on top due to their greater experience and better teamwork.
We’ll be able to see if this is the case when these two teams kick-off on the B stream momentarily which will be MNM’s global debut matchup.