ENVY left the Rainbow Six Siege speechless on Tuesday, June 3, when the popular esports organization announced its decision to join the North America League 2025 after picking up the NA Challenger Series 2025 champions JJ and Co.
ENVY's arrival meant that, for the first time since the North America League 2022, the region’s top flight included ten esports organizations. Unfortunately, such a situation only lasted for a few hours as the now-former Luminosity players revealed the brand’s decision to cut ties with the roster one week before the league kicked off.
Despite Luminosity's departure, the arrival of ENVY is great news; whether the reason behind this sudden investment is creating a successful legacy in the scene or simply trying to have a larger presence in the Esports World Cup, the organization's arrival makes North America's top flight more attractive. After all, the region now includes four massive American esports brands in Cloud9, Spacestation, Shopify Rebellion, and, obviously, ENVY, as well as M80 and DarkZero Esports, who have built a great fanbase through hard work and passion for esports in the recent years.
Although ENVY joining the Rainbow Six Siege is a move that must be welcomed with open arms, it would be unrealistic to expect them to become a top side all of a sudden. After all, the roster, which narrowly qualified for North America's top flight following back-to-back 2-1 victories in the region's Challenger Series 2025, includes three rookies. Moreover, the team's only players with previous NAL experience, Nick “Snake” Janis and Shawn “Twiizt” Testa, weren't part of last year’s top flight circuit.
To know more about the former JJ and Co players and current ENVY roster we have talked to James "JJBlazt" Letkovsky. Keep on reading for a look at the interview's best moments or watch the full interview on YouTube below.
The road to North America's top flight
Heading to the North America League Challenger Series 2025, it's fair to say JJ and Co weren't one of the teams on the spotlight. Looking at the rest of competitors, other teams with more experienced players, some of them world champions, attracted more interest — including M80X, NTMR, and even Revelations and IVsakeN.
"We definitely thought we could make it based on how we were practicing against other teams. We thought, going in to the tournament, there's only two other teams we really had to worry about, that we had to compete with, and that was the Revelations team that we end up meeting in the finals, and also the NTMR roster, which was the old SSG Academy team."
"It was more about will we actually make it happen, rather than can we actually make it happen."
The orgless mix had a fantastic start to the competition with back-to-back 2-0 wins against QoR Gaming and SpaceShoobs!, two teams that became regulars in Tier 2 tournaments in the region. However, the team's winning streak quickly ended after a 1-2 defeat against Revelations, who ended up taking the group stage's top seed. One day later, JJ and Co clinched a playoff spot after a 2-1 win against NTMR.
Following a rock-solid performance in the group stage, JJ and Co quickly became a menace for other teams. While they weren't seen as favorites by any means, it wasn't crazy to think the American mix could end up stealing the show. Unfortunately for them, the players' chances of promotion took a huge blow after a surprising 1-2 defeat against SpaceShoobs!.
Despite comfortably beating them in the group stage, their playoff match had a completely different outcome due to the astronaut's chaotic playstyle.
"The way they play is unstructured and just loose and chaotic, and like just frag-heavy, so at any day of the week they could beat you in the sense of if they are all shooting and if they are feeling confident and if it's working for them," JJ explained.
"We won map one convincingly against them, 7-3 or 7-4, something like that, we're feeling good, and then map two was Lair, their map pick, we went up 5-1 on defense and we lost six straight attacks in a row to lose the map 7-5. When I tell you that series was as simple as the whole team was completely mental shocked going in to map three, we might as well given up and lost the series on map two with the way we played on map three, you just could tell in our own calls inside the team that no matter what we were going to do on map three it did not matter, and we're going to lose, there's literally nothing we could have done in that series."
JJ and Co's loss against SpaceShoobs! meant the Americans would have no more second chances; another defeat and their promotion hopes would fade away instantly. In other words, JJ and Co had to get five consecutive wins to claim a top flight spot.
While the situation JJ and Co were in looked bad, the team made the most out of their final defeat. First, they stopped playing Lair; the Americans had lost it every time, with their record including three defeats. Therefore, the team banned it in four of their final five games.
Nevertheless, the most important lesson was in terms of the players' mentality. The team being in such a difficult position where every mistake would be punished forced the players to grow as the rounds went by.
One day after the team's harsh defeat against SpaceShoobs! the players' frustration was still affecting their performance. Against QoR Gaming, the orgless mix was put between a rock and a hard place as they lost the first map of the series. It was do-or-die for JJ and Co.
"We lost map one, a little bit of negative energy came over from the other day, I remember like towards the end that map when we were down 6-4 or 6-3, and I was like are we actually going to blow this, are we just done, one map down and everything spirals. But that's when our mental toughness actually did come through, one thing we learnt about ourselves is when it mattered the most, when our backs are against the wall, every time we came through."
"We had a day to recover, after the game (against SpaceShoobs!) we were all like really angry and upset and emotional about that game. But we all still knew we had what it took to make it to pro league, and go through every other team, it was just like we're more annoyed at ourselves that we gave up a chance to go through the upper bracket and have an extra life."
Following the initial upset against QoR Gaming and after taking a 2-1 victory, JJ and Co confidently faced the final weekend of action. The team ran over M80X and The Unc's and secured themselves a Top 3 Challenger Series 2025 finish. In other words, they were two BO3s away from claiming promotion.
How a scrim changed JJ and Co's future
Preparing for the final stages of the Lower Bracket wasn't an easy task for JJ and Co. Ahead of the team's clash against M80X, the team couldn't find any good oppositions to get ready for their upcoming games. Logically, scrimmaging is extremely important, and the tougher the challenge, the better.
"No one really wanted to scrim us the week leading up to the last week of Challenger Series. We couldn't really get any good scrims because a lot of pro teams weren't scrimming and most of the teams that were left in Challenger Series didn't want to play us," JJ revealed.
However, one team ended up accepting their request, and that was their eventual Challenger Series 2025 grand final opponents Revelations. Obviously, back then, even if there was a chance for the game to happen, it was impossible to say both teams would clash in the final match. Nevertheless, JJ and the rest of the team saw a big opportunity in their practice match.
"Revelations was the only team that actually agreed to play us because I don't think they thought we would win all of the Losers Bracket games and get to the finals, so we used that scrim as a complete opportunity to understand how they play and what we need to do when we get to a game where we get to deal with them, and we used that scrim as a testing ground and everything we learned from that scrim we used it in the finals."
"They don't play very structured at all and their number one goal when you play against them is try to avoid doing whatever is harder, so, if you're fully roaming, they will just ignore it and go to site. That's not structured, but they will just try to hit the site, they will never do normal extended out default attacks, they will always play very loose and kind of horizontally... so we literally dropped almost all of our strats in the scrim and just play four trap ops, and just run default rank setups."
"It completely shut them down. We figured that out, we were like 'this is what we have to do', and we did that again on game day and it worked out perfectly," JJ explained.
Following the team's victory against IVsakeN, the team crossed paths against Revelations in the grand final. Eventually, thanks to the knowledge they had on the team's playstyle, they ended up taking a narrow 2-1 victory. However, JJ thought the game could have gone smoother.
"Personally, I wanted Chalet, but two of my other teammates said that they were, and I quote, feeling Kafe today, so if my two fraggers say they are feeling Kafe and they want to play it, I was like, alright, I will trust you guys."
"We took each others map picks. It was weird, we took Bank, they took Kafe, that's why I say if we had just picked Chalet, I don't think they could have beaten us in Chalet, we could have wrapped it up in two."
With JJ and Co winning the Challenger Series 2025, the North America League had its tenth roster. Now, it was time for the players to find a new home before the league kicked off. With a little bit more than a month on their hands, people expected them to find a team to represent; however, time was ticking, and an announcement wasn't coming. Until earlier this week.
Signing for ENVY
After clinching a spot to compete in North America's top flight, the battle wasn't against other players anymore; it was all about finding a team. It was then when the players allowed themselves to dream, and the search for a new home quickly started.
"Once we qualified for Pro League, the next day I was on a mission. I was making a list, looking into all of the organizations that exist, that we could reach out to."
Logically, various esports organizations could tick the boxes set by the American orgless mix. However, finding a home where players can feel both supported and protected isn't easy.
In fact, it only takes a quick glance at Rainbow Six Siege's esports scene to find over a handful of cases of unpaid salaries, including Mirage, MNM Gaming, and Bleed Esports, just to mention a few. So, while representing a big esports brand may sound cool, it's extremely important for players to be careful, mindful, and always put their priorities first.
Finally, the American mix chose to represent ENVY, an esports brand with almost 20 years of history and a massive fanbase. Surprisingly enough, although the players had ENVY in mind since minute one, they weren't the ones to initiate the talks — ENVY's CEO Mike "Hastr0" Rufail did.
"We got some DMs and eventually Hastr0 DMd me first. Before I could even DM him, Hastr0 reached out to me and asked if I would love to set up a meeting. My meeting was literally with Hastr0, so that was another thing why we wanted it, the fact that he owns the org, the number one guy in the business, and he wanted to meet with me specifically, it was just straight one-on-one right to the top communication."
"I talked to him one-on-one for 30 minutes, explaining all of the things we're looking for, what we're, he explained what they are looking for, what they're, everything fit so perfectly and I was like, I left that meeting and I instantly told the team 'oh my god guys, this is who I want to play for, this is where I think we should play, I think this is going to be the best home for us for so many reasons.' After there, we had to obviously go back and work out all of the logistics, but after that meeting it was basically a done deal."
Plain and simple, it was love at first sight between JJ and Co and ENVY. However, there were other teams who fired their shot too; and this is where things get a bit spicy. According to JJ, the Challenger Series 2025 champions held talks with the American powerhouse 100 Thieves.
"We had some negotiations with 100T (100 Thieves). I had a meeting with them and they told me in the most polite way after a little while that they were like, basically, you guys aren't good enough. In the most polite way. He didn't actually say that, but 100T made it very clear in essence they were interested in getting in Siege but if they were going to get into Siege they wanted a ready to compete for championships at a world stage roster, and obviously I completely get that, because that's not what we're on paper, but it was cool they even took the time to meet with as well."
Regardless of what could have happened, JJ and Co are now professionals, and it's up to their hands to see if they can become international championship contenders, or just another team at the bottom of the pack. We will soon find it out, as the North America League 2025 Stage 1 will kick off next week.
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