Firstly, here are the final scores by the end of the day:
- Spacestation Gaming 7 - 2 Astralis
- XSET 7 - 4 TSM FTX
- Oxygen Esports 7 - 4 beastcoast
- Soniqs 7 - 4 Parabellum Esports
- Mirage 7 - 3 DarkZero Esports
Play of the day: Rexen quad-kill
An extremely clean quadruple kill from Rexen against Parabellum was one of multiple quad-kills on Wednesday. This one stood out, as he had nabbed all four kills within the first minute of the round and did not let a single player inside the building.
Player of the day: Rexen
Soniqs went first in the North American League with a win over Gunnar’s old team, Parabellum Esports. During this matchup, Rexen earnt 20 kills to five deaths, though Gunnar went 2-7.
Surprise of the day: XSET
Even the coin agreed that TSM FTX would beat XSET.
Doa: By process of historical evidence, everyone has picked the same thing therefore, the other team will win. CaliberJacob: One of us needs to sacrifice… TSM is going to get this win but I’m flipping my prediction, XSET will win now. Change the graphic. Jesse: We call this throwing for content. P3NGU1N: Watch now, XSET’s going to win because of that.
Doa was right that they had cursed TSM, Jacob was right to change his prediction, and P3NGU1N was right that XSET did in fact win. The result was a 7-4 to XSET, as they ended the game with rounds to spare and beat TSM, who were tied with Soniqs at the top of the table and looked set to cruise to the November Major.
Top moments of the day:
Finally, here’s a quickfire rundown of other notable moments in the NAL on Wednesday:
Pre-stream delays
A play day being hit with public-facing stream technical issues 30 minutes before the stream was meant to even start is not new, but issues on Twitch and YouTube’s end caused delays to the start of play day six as the channels simply couldn’t go online.
The YouTube stream finally went live at 11:06 PDT, half an hour later than normal and after game one was meant to start. The Twitch stream followed shortly after at 11:10, but both channels had a 4:59 countdown timer that wasn’t counting down. The countdown started at 11:15, and the stream officially started at 11:20.
Fortunately, the delay was accounted for by shortening the pre-show, skipping the pre-show analyst desk, and going straight to Pengu and Interro for the operator bans.
A sea of green
Spacestation absolutely demolished Astralis in a 7-2 scoreline, as every SSG player got at least a 1.22 SiegeGG Rating.
Yeti got 13 kills, while all five members of Astralis combined only had 15 between them. Astralis also got one opening kill total, while Rampy went 4-0 alone.
Snake gets a quadruple kill in a 1v4… but still loses
Yoggah won a 1v1 clutch by waiting out the clock to deny Snake the clutch of the day as he tried retaking on the Theme Park Throne Room objective.
DZ’s Six Invitational fight
DarkZero Esports needed to beat Mirage in regulation time to lock in a spot at the 2023 Six Invitational, which will be Canadian and Ecl9pse’s seventh SI in a row.
Despite losing both games against SSG and XSET last week, Mirage were no pushovers as they ended the first half 5-1 up while defending on Villa. Mohesse had a kill-death delta of 7-3 while Dexter was at 7-2. Ecl9pse, Panbazou, and Skys were 1-5, 1-5, and 1-6, respectively, as njr had the same number of kills as the rest of his team combined.
In round nine, these hopes ended as Mirage went up 6-3, meaning DZ couldn’t close it out before overtime. The game ended a round later, as Mirage pulled off a major upset to keep their underdog run going.
This was also Guerra’s first win as Mirage’s coach in an official matchup against DZ, a team he previously worked as an analyst for.
Oxygen get their first win
After five losses running, Sweater got his first win on Oxygen Esports against his old team, beastcoast, in a 7-4 scoreline.
The game, which was led by Nuers’ 17 kills to five deaths, was a battle between the only two teams without a win so far this stage. As such, it probably doesn’t signal a return to form for the Oxygen lineup.
Ferda notably won a 1v2 during this game, his first professional clutch.
The cleanest rush of the day
A Yeti triple kill started with a Ying rush as the game went from a 5v5 to a 4v1 in nine seconds.
Yeti: When the game started and they banned Zofia I looked at Callout and I laughed like “you guys left Ying up” and I laughed at them… and here we are.
Soniqs go first, bc alone in 10th, three-way tie for third
There seem to be four tiers of teams at the moment:
- Soniqs
- TSM, XSET, Mirage, DZ, and SSG
- PBLM and Astralis
- Bc and OxG
There’s still plenty of time for this to change, but two of those top teams are set to be disappointed.
