Rainbow Six Siege's North American Mini Major Stage 2 concluded its semifinals and the results are here. The NA Majors were held on LAN, which is pretty exciting as all the other majors were played online due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The North American Mini Major had some really exciting matches to watch this week, with all the matches played as a best of three format. We got to see a variety of maps in play, teaching us new strategies that can be implemented into our own games.
The matchup between DarkZero Esports and Spacestation was the most anticipated match of the semifinals. The first map was played on Coastline, which is an attacker-sided map. The Ying ban was actually quite surprising, but it makes sense as Ying is powerful after you clear Jager’s ADS. DarkZero’s first attacking round was well executed, and DZ had players on Hookah, Aqua, Big window, and hallway. DZ's positions cut off every rotation by SSG and DZ even won all the gunfights. The second round from SSG on kitchen was played out quite well, as SSG extended into sunrise and office. SSG’s kitchen setup only relied on frags with no form of denials or C4. SSG finished the first half with a 4-2 scoreline, with Dylan "Bosco" Bosco clutching a 1v2 on the fifth round as Smoke with only two bullets remaining.
DZ on defense played completely opposite of how SSG played. DZ played operators which helped with plant denial and support. DZ’s Penthouse hold was actually quite different compared to what you see in ranked matches. DZ extended the objective into Kitchen and Service, which is one floor below Penthouse. The team's plan for extending towards Service was to get C4 kills during the final seconds and winning the round. It didn’t go as planned, but DZ managed to win the round based on gunfights. Kyle "Mint" Lander had an insane clutch in round 12 as Jager. Mint had been having a terrible game up until then in terms of frags, but he was able to clutch a 1v2 situation by rotating from lobby into service and picking two kills after the plant went down. DZ then took the first map with an 8-6 scoreline.
The final map was played on Villa, which is a defender-sided map. DZ was pretty confident when it came to defense. The strategies used by DZ were pretty normal, but the operator lineup made a huge impact on countering SSG’s attacks. SSG was only able to take one round from DZ on the attacking side, which is actually quite terrible. However, when the sides were switched, SSG completely turned over and was able to dominate DZ. Nathanial "Rampy" Duvall clutched an important round for SSG on round seven as Melusi. Rampy waited for DZ to execute and when DZ was distracted, Rampy pushed into the site and killed three players including the planter, which allowed SSG to take round seven with ease.
This meant DZ was up 6-2 and only required one round to win the series. But SSG’s individual plays actually won multiple rounds, such as Canadian from SSG rushing towards the planter and killing the enemy before the plant went down, SSG’s Fultz fragging out like crazy, or even Bosco clutching a 1v2 situation. SSG turned over the match completely and managed to take it to overtime. Then SSG went on to winning the series with an 8-6 scoreline and making this map one of the most insane comebacks the viewers have ever seen. Fultz and Rampy were the driving force for SSG as they topped with 19 and 15 kills respectively. On the other side, DZ had two insane players, Hyper and Skys, who popped off with 19 and 13 kills.
This match allowed SSG to move into the upper brackets while pushing DZ to the lower brackets. DZ now another chance to face off against the winner of TSM/OXG.
For more coverage on Rainbow Six Siege's North American Mini Major Stage 2, you can watch all the streams on Twitch or YouTube.
So, what are your thoughts on the ongoing Rainbow Six Siege North American Mini Major Stage 2? Have you enjoyed the games and learned strategies from the pro players? Whatever your thoughts may be, let us know in the comments below.
