The Rainbow Six Siege ANZ Cup is up to it’s fourth and final open qualifier weekend before the Sydney LAN finals and it has been quite an interesting few weekends with teams such as the newly acquired Taboo Esports rising to the top. Mindfreak whom was dominant in the console space had to transition to a different platform due to Rainbow Six Siege Pro League being played on PC and was forced to compete on a platform they’re not used to.

Currently sitting on 6th position on the ANZ Pro League Qualifier Standings, I caught up with the team’s captain Jayden “Dizzle” Saunders on changing platforms and the performance so far before heading into the final open qualifier weekend.

Moving from console to PC, how’s the transition for yourself and as a team moving to a different platform?

With only a few weeks as an entire team on PC, we have been pretty happy with the transition so far. Rainbow 6 Siege is definitely a game that flourishes on PC and has been optimised to be played on it. We each had clocked thousands of hours on console and it started to feel a bit stale. Having to learn a new skill set on the keyboard and mouse plus not having the stigma of being the best team 24/7 has been a breath of fresh air. It has allowed us to go back and really focus on developing a play-style and game plan unique to us. Also being able to take development opportunities away from the losses we’ve faced has been important, even the teams we have lost to; such as Athletico, the margin grows smaller each time.

Having to learn a new skill set on the keyboard and mouse plus not having the stigma of being the best team 24/7 has been a breath of fresh air.

Was there anything you guys needed to change moving to the PC platform in terms of strats?

Most of the strategies we have used are a resemblance of the current “META” and also a form of some of our Xbox strats. There has been a few things that have needed to be adjusted, the two that stick out in my mind are, the longer horizontal lines, being that the graphics and frame rate is superior you can hold a horizontal line from 2-3 rooms away almost and confidently land a head-shot with a click, this just isn’t the case on console, the 2nd is verticality. Buck is played an enormous amount in the Rainbow Six ANZ scene and would probably sit in the top 5 picked operators, so sites where you would traditionally anchor now needs to be adapted to have a stronger roaming presence so you do not relinquish your vertical control too soon or easily.

Source // Ubisoft Australia

After three open qualifiers, you guys are currently ranked 6th on the ladder – how do you feel about the position of the team so far and what kind of improvements do you see the team needing?

We are pretty happy with the position so far. We wanted to make the top 8 to qualify for the ANZ pro-league. Providing we win a couple of games this weekend we can achieve this. After the 2nd week we were tied for 2nd, after the 3rd week it was 6th so after the first and second position the rest of the field between us and 2nd place is pretty close and could change again drastically this weekend. Seeding will play a role in this, what round do we or the other teams between us and 1st/2nd place come across the top teams. Last weekend the 2 games that we lost were by 2 rounds, so we are looking back over VODs and seeing how we can do things a bit differently. We will be looking to make a few changes to speed up our pressure on attack as well as seeing what can be done about different map bans and ensuring better map control.

We are pretty happy with the position so far. We wanted to make the top 8 to qualify for the ANZ pro-league. Providing we win a couple of games this weekend we can achieve this.

Taboo Esports seem like the hot favourites in the competition – what are your thoughts on the team and do you see them as a massive threat going into LAN?

Taboo are a great team and a bunch of really good guys. They were formerly known as GiU, but have since signed with Taboo ESC, a newly formed organisation owned by Artemis who is an established presence in not only Australia but also the global gaming/streaming scene. Being that we are the underdogs, we don’t necessarily see them as a threat, they are more so the team to beat. After being in that position on Xbox for so long ourselves; I do not envy them. The rest of the competition is always analyzing and working towards taking down the top spot and it becomes a heavy burden. One only needs to look at Continuum from the North American Scene, they have gone from back to back world champions to missing out on the last 2 LAN finals, it only takes 1 or 2 average games. Taboo definitely deserve the top spot though and we hope we are there at LAN with them, but in the game of King of the Hill; it is always hardest being the one on the hill.  

Source // Ubisoft Australia

This weekend is the last Open Qualifier for the ANZ Cup to gather points, how are you guys approaching each weekend especially this one with training before the finals?

The first week all we did was play Terrorist Hunt to try and help better our muscle memory with keyboard movement and shooting using our strats from Xbox. The 2nd week we made a few adjustments to our play and scrimmed a few teams throughout to test the strats. The 3rd week we changed everyone’s operators just to get a better understanding of each player’s roles and see what we could do to increase the pool of operator selections for our team, we also just tried different things in-game and different attacks to see what affect they had and how teams that we weren’t able to scrim adapted and then went back to VODs and went over how their in-game rotations worked and how the defense changed accordingly. For this week we have tweaked a few more strats, modified some operator choices and preferences amongst the players so they are more comfortable and also focused on the verticality of maps and teams. We will organise a few more scrims and probably spend a lot more time in Terrorist Hunt. Ideally I’d like the guys to focus less on winning the scrims and more just trying a few things on attack and defence that we have spoken about putting into action.

The last Rainbow Six Siege ANZ Pro League Open Qualifier kicks off this weekend. You can catch all the action on the Rainbow Six ANZ Twitch Channel here from 12PM AEST on Sunday.

Mindfreak Rainbow Six Siege Pro League Profile Video: