Rise Nation Falls to Relegations as NA R6PL Plays Final Week
By Wyatt Fossett ·
In our last chance to see these squads go head-to-head in the North American region this season, Rise Nation and Excelerate Gaming were poised to fight to climb out of the basement.
The entire Season IX for the North American region of the Rainbow Six Pro League has been a weird one. There’s no denying that. After Orgless disbanded, leaving the entire league a team short, the entire schedule was quartered, because one of the eight squads wouldn’t have an opponent every week.
This week, it was Rogues turn to take some time off, though they probably would have preferred the opportunity to end the season on a higher note than they did.
Orgless (the now defunct team) taking the 8th Place spot automatically for forfeiting the season, 7th Place will be the lowest standings position possible. Which means that one team will have to play in relegations, and no team will face instant demotion.
The way R6 PL offseason works is that 8th Place gets demoted to challenger, and 1st Place in challenger gets promoted to pro league. 7th Place in pro league will place the 2nd Place challenger team and the winner will play in pro next season.
With the top of the standings in a locked state since last week, it’s really only the bottom that can shuffle in the final play day of the regular season.
Here are the NA Rainbow Six Pro League Power Rankings through Week 14.
1st - These Evil Geniuses have already qualified to go to Milan in a few weeks to participate in the Season IX Rainbow Six Pro League playoffs, and it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t really try and do anything stellar in the final week of NA play. It was proven immediately, as Evil Geniuses didn’t even bother banning any operators during the pre-game phase. Though they lost, it was one-thousand percent an amazing game from Excelerate Gaming, over any poor play by Evil Geniuses.
2nd - Team Reciprocity, as opposed to EG, took their final opportunity to make a statement and crushed a very soft-looking Spacestation Gaming. Before their match, they were well aware that nothing was to be done in hopes of catching up to any of the playoff teams, yet they didn’t play weak what-so-ever. Taking Villa against SSG, the Reciprocity folks stomped their way to an impressive 7-2 victory to close out their Season IX. Now, the squad will head into the offseason with their pride in hand, and some plans to carry their momentum.
3rd - They may have won this week against one of our favorite teams in the NA region in Rise Nation, but they sure didn’t look like they were going to for most of it, and after a pitiful loss last week, we don’t have a lot of faith in DarkZero Esports as we head into the playoffs. They may have finished the season in the number 1 position on the standings, but they are playing like anything but a top-tier team.
4th - This pretty great Rogue team had the final week of the season off, and we’re really excited to see where they are when they show up come next season. With plenty of smaller tournaments throughout the year, there’s still a lot of Rogue to be seen in Rainbow Six Siege competition in 2019. In opposite fashion from DarkZero, Rogue ended the season playing weaker than they should have. This is a team deserving of a chance to play in Milan with a few slip-ups along the way to qualifying.
5th - It was a spectacular display be Excelerate Gaming this week. Playing in the first game of the day, a loss would mean that Rise Nation would have a shot to climb out of relegation, and over complicate things for DarkZero. However, Excelerate pulled up hard against Evil Geniuses and they swung around the momentum of the series and took the win from the best team in the league. Excel managed to avoid having to play relegations by putting themselves out of reach of the last-place team.
6th - With another loss this week, we can’t justly keep placing Rise Nation above so many other squads in the North American Rainbow Six Pro League, even though we think they are stronger. Regardless of Rise Nation having to now play in relegations to maintain their place in the league, we have faith that they belong here, and they will be back next season. Now, Rise just need to shore up some of their mistakes and synergy issues during the offseason, and we will see what Season X brings for them.
7th - Possibly the hardest team to really pin-down, the Spacestation Gaming crew ended their Season IX with an absolutely embarrassing loss to Team Reciprocity. More often than not, SSG has proven that they may be the team least deserving of their standings rank. They played up to their opponents level a lot this season. Beating or competing against top-tier squads, and losing convincingly to the “lesser” squads. They must shape-up if they want to stick around through the end of next year.
Match of the Day
Excelerate Gaming vs. Evil Geniuses
With Latam and EU finishing up their Season IX regular seasons this week, we should have a pretty solid picture of who will be representing their regions in Milan very soon.
Until then, you can check out all of the live games on the Rainbow6 Twitch channel, and keep in locked on Twin Galaxies for more Power Rankings and Rainbow Six Pro League coverage.