After conquering G2 in matchday five of the Rainbow Six Pro Leauge European division, Team Vitality suffered a bit of a misstep on Kafe against PENTA today. Meanwhile, Team Empire showed that they’re clearly looking to repeat their season nine performance after taking down Natus Vincere.
Strong fragging and an off-beat Maverick play by PENTA helped even the odds in the early rounds. Considering the way PENTA have performed this season, it was surprising to see Vitality give up several rounds to the long-suffering squad. Thanks to Jean “RevaN” Prudenti taking control of Reading, PENTA forced Vitality into a retake in round five. But this didn’t go well for Vitality.
More bad luck came Vitality’s way in round seven when RevaN shut down a full site take and a defuser plant with a single C4 from below. RevaN was the last man standing for PENTA for the second time in the matchup. This came after Bastien “BiBoo” Dulac grabbed a clean 4K. Even both broadcasters on the desk were noticeably upset by the PENTA win.
Vitality pushed to match point at 6-5 with the worst case scenario being a draw. For PENTA, a draw is far from ideal at this point in the season. After a sloppy looking round 12, PENTA picked up the draw. Draws are nice, but for PENTA, it might as well have been a loss given their current standing. For Vitality, this match should have been in the bag considering how poorly PENTA have performed this season.
The second matchup of the day saw the promising Na’Vi roster take on the Russian Giant that is Team Empire. Na’Vi took the first round off of Empire in surprising fashion. Danila “dan” Dontsov looked like the Empire player to beat. Any time he was allowed to live past the opening 30 seconds, he proved to be a roster killer. Round four made it extremely clear that dan needed to be dealt with if Na’Vi wanted to have any chance of winning. Jack “Doki” Robertson took down dan and another Empire player to push the match to 3-2.
Empire extended their lead to 5-2 on defense. Danil “JoyStiCK” Gabov ran Na’Vi into the ground as Jager. It looked like a demoralizing turn of events for Na’Vi that would be nearly impossible to recover from. Empire strung together two perfect rounds to push for match point at 6-2.
After a round 9 slaughter, Empire stopped Na’Vi’s bleeding for them at 7-2. While it was a decidedly one-sided match, the new Na’Vi roster managed to grab two rounds off of one of the best teams in the world. Empire hold strong in the standings and Na’Vi maintain a high middle ground.
The EU division of the R6 Pro League returns on Monday, July 22 for matchday seven. Fans can catch the official broadcast here.
