April 1st was a really good day for Rainbow Six fans. Siege got some extremely adorable outfits and a new map event in "Rainbow is Magic", which will be available until the 8th of the month. Later in the day, we also got Play Day 11 of North America R6 Pro League which saw the battle for the top heat up, and the war to avoid last enter its final stages.
With just three more weeks in Season IX of the Pro League, the top squads in North America are desperately trying to snatch up the remaining points available to them. Through today’s matches, the battle for the top two seeds and a berth in the LAN Finals is a four-team race. So every single point matters more now than ever before.
Here are our North America Rainbow Six Pro League Power Rankings through Week 11.
1st - They may not be in first place, but the big-brains of the Evil Geniuses Rainbow Six Siege team have played some of the most dominant Rainbow Six in the history of the Pro League. Their current map differential is a staggering +23 through only nine games played, which is 13 more than the second highest diff. As they are playing at top-tier, and have played one game less than DarkZero, they earn the highest rank. Though they let Rise come back after going up 4 rounds to 0 on Day 11, it was more a bonkers showing by their opponents, rather than a poor one by them. Regardless of the small stumble, it’s still clear from where we’re sitting that EG is the cream of the NA crop.
2nd - Play Day 11 brought out the best of HotanCold, and DarkZone Esports continue to be a scary team to play against as we head closer to LAN at the end of the season. After their win on Day 11 against a rather feisty Excelerate squad, DZ is almost guaranteed a sport in Milan come end of the season. Next week, DarkZone plays Evil Geniuses, which will be a very interesting bout.
3rd - With a win on Play Day 11 against a pretty decent Rogue team, the squad from Team Reciprocity managed to gain a bit more momentum back after looking a little soft in this half of the season. Hoping to regain what helped them get to the Invitational and beyond, FoxA from Req said “we’ve just got to get back to playing our game the way we know how,” and that seems to be what they did against Rogue today.
4th - The folks at Spacestation had the day off this week (as they were scheduled to play the now-defunct Orgless), which means their ranking is only going to shuffle on the standings with the results of matches out of their control. Next week, Spacestation will play a Rogue team who is looking to end out Season IX with some big wins. So that will be a tough challenge.
5th - I want to give Rise more height in the rankings. They’re not a team that truly owns all of their losses. Just last week they beat the very impressive Reciprocity squad 7-5. On Play Day 11, they had to go up against an EG team that desperately wanted three points, which was unfortunate. But after dropping the first 4 rounds, Rise found a wound and pressed it hard, winning 6 rounds in a row before eventually drawing with Evil Geniuses.
6th - Two weeks ago, Excel absolutely walked all over Reciprocity to the tune of a 7-2 victory, and in Day 11 they put up quite a bit of a fight against the first-placed DarkZero Esports. They may be out of the race for a LAN invitation, but if there’s one team you don’t really want to have to play in the final weeks of the season, it would be Excelerate Gaming.
7th - Even though they played really well against a recently surging Reciprocity, the team from Rogue dropped their match-up on Day 11, and are almost completely mathematically eliminated from the playoffs for Season 9. Two games remain on their schedule through the end of April, so we will see if they can manage to play spoiler to anyone else’s journey on their way out the door.
In the final game of the day, Evil Geniuses failed to get all three points on the table, which will bring them into a tie for second place with Reciprocity. DarkZone sits three points ahead of those two squads, but EG has a game in hand against them. Stirring it all up, Evil Geniuses will play that very DarkZone team next week for a very important three points.
All of this to say that the last few weeks of the season are going to be intense, and meaningful all the way to the bitter end.
Rainbow Six Pro League will continue in a week, where Play Day 12 will take place on Monday, April 8th. Matches are scheduled to start at the normal 6:00 PM PST and can be watched on the Rainbow Six Twitch channel.
