Spacestation Gaming's Rainbow Six Siege Year 9 concluded on Friday with a harsh defeat against the eventual Six Invitational 2025 grand finalists, FaZe Clan, after a maximum overtime loss on Skyscraper.
- Match stats: FaZe Clan 2-0 Spacestation Gaming
Despite the team's exit from the competition following the players' first and only match in Boston's MGM Music Hall, the Americans must look at the bigger picture: an international campaign that started with a 0-3 run in Manchester's Swiss Stage has ended in Spacestation's best Six Invitational result in five years.
While the future seems bright and Spacestation has plenty of reasons to be hopeful ahead of the upcoming season, which will kick off in Rio de Janeiro's Reload, the result against the Brazilians meant elimination; a difficult one to swallow, especially in front of a home crowd.
Against the Brazilians, Spacestation surprisingly struggled on Kafe's defence despite having picked the map themselves. With teams averaging a 54% defensive win rate on the Russian map, the result was a bit surprising.
"We just felt a little too tense, it was the same with the BDS game, it's as if we cared too much about the result, and it's also as we weren't paying into the usual cues we have," Liam "Ashn" Paz explained in a post-match interview with SiegeGG.
"On defence as well, we just weren't present enough to realize what was actually going on, that's something that just happens whenever you're a little too tight, or you care a bit too much, you don't realize what's going on around you as much as if there was nothing on the line," he explained.
Following FaZe Clan's win on Kafe, the Brazilians quickly became the favorites to move to the next round. The fans' hopes of seeing Spacestation making it through took a massive hit when the Six Invitational 2024 grand finalists managed to secure a two-round lead on Skyscraper, the second map of the series.
"They were really playing just really consolidated, they weren't playing for opening kills or anything, they were just really just stuck in the box, they would just give office right away and just all play for the late round on the site," the American described.
Spacestation needed something to break in FaZe Clan's defences, and that's when the team's reaction came.
"We started picking up the pace, we brought out the shield and we started just displacing them, just making them move outside of these spots, taking the map space that they gave us, and then, just making a move in the end, and it was working," he added.
Spacestation's three back-to-back successful attacks on Skyscraper meant the Americans were one round away from forcing the third map of the series. Unfortunately for them, the Brazilians managed to push the game to overtime as they won the last round of regulation.
In the first overtime round, FaZe Clan quickly restored the lead thanks to a 1v2 clutch by Thiago "Handy" Ferreira. Later on, the astronauts got back in the game after an Alec "Fultz" Fultz 3K in the penultimate round of the map. It was do-or-die for Spacestation in Skyscraper's final round.
Within the first minute and a half, the Americans secured a two-men advantage on attack. It seemed like the astronauts had the upper hand. While Víctor "VITAKING" Santos got FaZe Clan back on track with a kill on Ashn, Spacestation restored the two-men lead with a kill on the Brazilians' top fragger Lucas "soulz1" Schinke. With control of top floor while attacking Bedroom and Bathroom, the astronauts started the plant. It couldn't get any better.
However, in a matter of two seconds, the Brazilians demolished Spacestation's hopes of forcing the decider map with three quick kills. Suddenly, Benjamin "Benjamaster" Dereli was the only astronaut left, who couldn't do anything to secure the round that Spacestation desperately needed.
"There was a flank cam that I should have been on," Ashn admitted. "We had a cam in cups itself, not actually in drums but in cups, but it would have been fast enough for them to react to turn around and be like, yeah, there's a guy on the flank," he followed.
"I wasn't on it, it stings a little bit but, towards the end of that map, we played how we wanted to play, and that's all that mattered in the end," he added,
As mentioned above, the American was Spacestation's first and only death before the team suddenly fell apart. If someone had to be on drones, that was him; at the end, that's where the difference between both teams was. The 19-year-old walked us through the round:
"It was a 5v3 initially, we were kind of thinking in our head, 'okay, let's just not throw this, we have such a great advantage, it's almost unlosable.' It's like, you don't believe in that, you don't think that, but those thoughts are in your head, and so those start to creep in and then, it came a 4v3, then a 4v2, and we called to push the site."
"I saw that happen, I saw Forest hit a Frost Mat hopping over the staircase to chase the guy who was running down the stairs, he hit that, two of us got flanked by the guy drum, and my heart kind of just dropped because he said 'flank, flank, flank there's a cam' and then my heart just kind of dropped because he told me earlier to get on it."
While history only remembers the winners, and despite the way the match ended, Spacestation's players are positive ahead of the upcoming season.
"If you put the team that we were in Montreal versus the team that we are here, I think we would by far just blow that team in Montreal at the water, it's just about taking what we can from this event and what we've actually learned and building upon that, we're here to work on our improvement, we're not here just for the results."
"We don't really care that we played on Top 6 or anything, it's just the steady improvement, that's what's about at the end of the day, because if you focus on improving yourself then, you know, maybe one day, it'll be there where you can win something, and so just keep going, keep hammering the points that we need to improve on, and that's all SSG needs to do, then we'll be in a good spot regardless, so it's all we're really going to focus on," the American concluded.
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