Note: This interview took place before the start of the BLAST R6 Major Montreal.
One month and one week after Elevate's surprising win against Bleed Esports at the Asia League 2024 Stage 2 grand finals, the Asian European mix will make its international debut in the BLAST R6 Major Montreal.
In what is Yunos “SpeakEasy” Mohamed's second season as an Elevate player, the Singaporean's experience has been crucial in the roster's growth. His almost seven-year-long career in Rainbow Six Siege stands out compared to the rest of the players and the coaching staff; a blessing in disguise as the Singaporean has been able to guide the project since its beginning in Year 8.
"Sometimes, new teams don't try to tackle the problem, they try to go around it, but throughout my experience, I think this is one of the most important things you should do if you want to improve as a team," SpeakEasy said after being asked about the importance of his experience for Elevate in an interview with SiegeGG.
His first international qualification under Elevate was at the beginning of Year 8 as the team qualified for the BLAST R6 Major Copenhagen. Unfortunately, the team's appearance in Copenhagen didn't go as planned as Elevate had to play with the team's coach Ilham "Sunan" Surya to replace Barcode, who wasn't allowed to travel to Denmark due to visa issues.
Elevate's performance in Copenhagen was the team's only international action in Rainbow Six Siege's Year 8 as they missed out on Atlanta following two BO3 defeats against Bleed Esports. Right after that, Elevate realized a roster change was needed. "We wanted to make a roster change, we felt like if we had stuck with the same roster it wouldn't have worked."
Eventually, Elevate ended up not making one but three roster changes as the team signed Alex "Shed" Moore, Chow "Mcie" Pak-him, and Nor "Nhaiqal" Haiqal. Out of these three roster additions, Shed and Mcie were the most surprising ones as they came from Europe's Tier 2 scene. Both players had been part of G Who, a team that finished in third place in Europe's off-season tournament R6 South Breach.
"We tried to formalize an Asian roster, a local roster, but after around January, we found an opportunity in G Who as two players, Adrian and Creedz, were actually moving away from G Who to be picked up by Tier 1 teams. That left us with Mcie, Layton, and Shed. At that time, we could only fill two roster moves, and then we picked up Shed and Mcie because we felt they fit our roles and playstyle."
In the first stage of the season, Elevate made some progress in the right direction. Despite having made deep changes to the team, the roster managed to finish in third place in the Asia League 2024 Stage 1, only behind FURY and Bleed Esports.
Although the team missed out on both Manchester and the Esports World Cup, nobody in the team thought making changes was the right call. Instead, they tackled the roster's problems.
"We are open, there are no secrets, there's no bad blood, we only push ourselves to be better, everything we do is always to push ourselves to be better, with that mindset you don't really have the plan to change, we just stick to our call and the result shows," SpeakEasy said.
In Stage 2, Elevate had a brilliant start to the split with five back-to-back victories, including a 7-4 win against FURY. However, when it felt like the team could put Bleed Esports between a rock and a hard place, Julio "Julio" Giacomelli's boys flawlessly defeated Elevate.
"We were trying our best in terms of we did try to plan a strategic counter to the map, which was Clubhouse. In Siege, not everything will go in your way. We were not showing strats, we were trying things that didn't work out, it was a good experience actually."
Despite the team's defeat against Bleed Esports, Elevate's second-place finish in the group stage was followed by a 2-1 victory against NoCap R6. This meant that Elevate would play against Bleed Esports in a BO3 match to decide who would represent the region in Montreal.
The series didn't start well for Elevate as Bleed Esports won on Nighthaven Labs. However, Elevate pushed their opponents to map three after a 7-4 win on Bank.
On Consulate, Bleed Esports had the better start as they won three of their four first defenses. After Elevate won round five, Bleed Esports' final defense before swapping roles could be crucial to the final result.
Consulate's sixth round was exactly what Elevate didn't need as Bleed Esports' Aldi "Hovenherst" Firmansyah clutched a 1v3 situation after killing the player who was carrying the defuser. Throwing such an imporant round in the third map of the series could have had a massive impact on Elevate's roster, which included three rookies. Surprisingly, that didn't happen.
"Funnily enough, that round didn't actually affect us because our goal was to get two rounds on attack, because we felt so confident on defense knowing that we already got two rounds."
"I think mentality wise we didn't even think like 'ah why did we do this, what happened' and no, these are the things that would cause an argument and make us play not our style, so yeah, I am really impressed not only by myself but also the team."
The players' confidence in defense was seen after switching sides as they won their first four defenses. Although Bleed Esports managed to push the map to overtime, Elevate ended up winning the match after two back-to-back 3Ks by Mcie.
With this victory, Elevate qualified for the BLAST R6 Major Montreal. Ironically, Bleed Esports’ performance in Manchester granted Elevate a Phase 2 spot. However, although that sounds great especially for the team's goal of qualifying for the Six Invitational 2025, competing in the play-ins could have helped Elevate's overall lack of international and LAN experience.
"I think it would actually helped us if we were to play in the play-ins, but of course we are very grateful for being put in Phase 2, but yeah, I agree on that, I remember my first LAN, I was not comfortable," SpeakEasy concluded.
Later today, Elevate will make its Montreal debut against Team Secret. Curiously enough, the Asian European mix will play against Adrian "Adrian" Tryka, another former G Who player. The match is set to kick off at 7:30 PM UTC.