This week saw the new season of the Rainbow Six Siege Europe League get underway and it was a week of mixed results for Wolves.
Wolves are one of the few teams in Europe that didn’t make any changes in the transfer window and enter the new season with an experienced roster used to working together.
Play day one saw Wolves take on the mainly British roster of Into The Breach (ITB) who made a number of changes in the transfer window. The game started with Wolves on defence and the pack showed their prowess by ruthlessly dispatching defensive round after defensive round before ending the first half 5-1 up.
Starting the attacking half they just needed two rounds to secure the victory. However, that was not meant to be as a number of small errors and attacking mistakes gave ITB the opportunities they needed to capitalise on a defender sided meta and saw out six straight rounds to claim the victory over Wolves and all three points.
There was very little time to assess where exactly Wolves went wrong as they were back in action the very next day against one of the strongest European teams – Virtus Pro (VP). Hot off the back of a third-place finish at the World Championship in Brazil this Russian roster were strong favourites to take the victory.
Wolves once again started on the defensive side and, once again, stormed to a 5-1 half. With flashbacks of the previous day’s result, fans held their breath hoping the same fate did not await them for a second day running.
VP started their defensive half strong winning three straight rounds bringing the score to 5-4 and a familiar feeling for Wolves fans watching on. However just as it seemed history might repeat itself Wolves claimed the next round and sat on match point. VP weren’t done and won the following rounds forcing the game to overtime.
Some incredible plays from Wolves saw them eventually come away with the win 8-7 and claimed a valuable two points and their first win of the new season.
The first week has showed Wolves to be a deadly force while defending, only dropping two rounds in their defensive half over the two games. But attack is where they, and many other teams in the league, seem to struggle in this defender sided meta.
BiBooAF in his post-match interview addressed this and assured they are working on it for the next game: “First W of the season and it feels good! We have improved our defence a lot in the past few weeks but we are struggling to finish our attacks. We need to calm down in the late round and communicate better to close our games.”
Wolves face newcomers FNATIC on Monday 25 March at 18:00 GMT // 19:00 CET and will be looking to build on this victory and begin to climb the leader board as they look to qualify for the Manchester Major.
