Last Thursday saw the long-awaited return of NSE’s Rainbow Six Siege tournament, with over 70 new and returning teams entering the league for its Spring Championship. The Winter Championship saw tournament favourites Lancaster University narrowly lose out on being crowned the Winter champions after being defeated by Coventry University. Will the Spring Championship see Lancaster get their revenge or will Coventry solidify their place as the best UK University Rainbow Six Siege team?
Coming into the Spring Championship, Coventry plans to continue their success and bring home another Championship title. Speaking to Lucan, their captain, prior to their games last week, it was clear that they had put the time into improving as a team and are confident that this Season will be a good one.
“We thought it [the final] was in the bag for us… We are never going to underestimate our opponents again and are willing to try our hardest against all opponents in NSE.” - Mahi, Captain of Lancaster Clowns
Meanwhile, Lancaster’s defeat to Coventry in the final was a difficult one to accept for the team. Placing the blame for their defeat firmly on complacency after dominating throughout the competition, the team appears to have a renewed focus coming into the Spring Championship.
Both teams have started their season strong, winning both of their best of one matches in the first week of qualification. We got the chance to catch up with Lucan following their decisive 7-0, 7-1 wins and asked him how he and his team felt:
“We are living up to first seed and [we] are well on track to repeat our qualification run of last split, going as the only team who went undefeated throughout the entire qualifiers.” - Lucan, Captain of Coventry Phoenix Ice.
These titans are likely to clash once again this tournament, but how did the other top teams from last season fair during their first week of qualifications?
Alongside the two mentioned previously, this week saw many of the other teams from the Championship bracket, such as the teams from Sheffield-Hallam and Liverpool, secure both wins to comfortably see them on-track to requalify for this season. Meanwhile, it was a rocky start for the Universities of Derby, Exeter and Manchester, only picking up a single win each. They will hope to deliver a stronger performance over the remaining two weeks of qualifiers in order to retain their spots in the Championship bracket. For De Montfort University, who ended last season at the top of the Challenger bracket, their hopes of Championship qualification are already nearly over after suffering two defeats in the opening week. They will need to win all of their remaining qualifiers to secure a spot in the top bracket.
With many teams aiming for a spot in the Championship finals, this competition promises to be fierce. However, between now and that illusive final, we have a lot of Siege to look forward to! We’ll be bringing you some of the most anticipated games of the qualification stages through our livestream over at https://www.twitch.tv/universitysiegeleague. If you missed last Thursday’s broadcast then don’t worry, we’ve got all the highlights here.
Our first match between the Universities of Keele and Leeds took us to Villa. Despite starting off rocky and getting decisively shut-out by Keele in the opening few rounds of their attack, Leeds managed to salvage their attacking half of the game, trailing by only two rounds in a 4-2 round split in favour of the defenders - a result commonly expected for this map. However, in a tightly fought competition which took us to the very last round of regulation time, Leeds dedicated themselves to their off-site map control which Keele struggled to contend with without costing them too much time.
In a turn of fortune for the team trailing the half, we saw Leeds, who ended their Winter season in 21st place, take 5 of their 6 defending rounds to end the match 7-5 in their favour and defeat their 14th place counterparts in what will no doubt be one of this season’s many upsets!
For our second game we joined Brunel University, who ended in 4th place last season, take on a wildcard in the form of Bournemouth University’s new entry to the league. Taking to Clubhouse, a staple map for any good Rainbow 6 Siege team, we watched the newly formed Bournemouth team struggle to coordinate their attacks efficiently against a veteran team.
After facing a near clean sweep against their attacking efforts, Bounemouth pulled out an excellent attack against a Gym/Bedroom defence taking them to a 4vs1 to close out the round, but their lack of coordination nearly cost them:
With a round finally under their belt, there was hope that Bournemouth would pull off a come-back. Brunel had different plans: crushing that hope quickly as they took their first attacking round, they placed themselves onto match-point. With their victory looking inevitable, Brunel soon closed it out with a beautiful ace from seinaruuu (https://clips.twitch.tv/LovelyIgnorantOrangePanicVis) to take the match 7-2 despite a valiant effort from Bournemouth. Brunel will most certainly be a team worth watching in the following weeks as they look poised to outperform their previous season.
Be sure to catch our next broadcast, over at https://www.twitch.tv/universitysiegeleague, this Thursday at 7pm GMT to watch as more teams battle it out in their journey to qualify for the Championship bracket!
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