AGR-S presents a brand new series focusing on the competitive side of Siege and the players competing for glory and fame. First off is A1ga, team leader of PENTA sports. We’ll be doing more E-sports focused content moving on forward, both text and video based.

Hey, can you tell us a little about yourself and your gaming background?

Hello, I am A1GA, team captain and in-game leader of PENTA Sports Rainbow Six: Siege roster. As for FPS gaming in my past, I played a lot of CS:S and some CS:GO, along with QuakeLive and Unreal Tournament. Im 19 years old and I study engineering in Czech republic. In my freetime I like to watch TV shows and listen to a lot of different music – rap, EDM, K-pop – I love Logic, Feint and Girls Day. I am also a big fan of anime, my favorites being Oregairu, Psycho-Pass , Death note and Shokugeki no Souma.

What made you interested in Siege and what is your ultimate goal and ambitions with Siege?

I was trying to become a progamer ever since I tried CS:S when I was 13 years old – someone playing a game for a living. CS:GO is something that is extremely hard to get into because nobody is going to care about giving a chance to new players for the most part as far as high tier CS:GO goes – I tried. I saw the opportunity to pick up Siege and I was aiming from the start to be competing at the highest level in this game. I am finishing school in May this year and I am aiming to play Rainbow Six: Siege fulltime – for living.

Have you tried any of the previous instalments of Rainbow Six?

No, but I heard Siege is quite different from all the previous instalments.

How much time a week/day does your team dedicate to practice?

5-7 days a week, when we meet we practice together 4-6 hours, a bit more on weekends. Plus individual practice (grinding pubs – S4i and rendier do this quite a lot)

Your team consists of different nationalities, are there any special challenges with this? Like communication, culture etc.

When we miscommunicate, its never because of language. Everyone on the team speaks fluent English. When we don’t talk to each other properly or give bad info during the game, its because we are just tilting or something similar.

The team recently had some line up changes, do you think this has affected your team chemistry or is it just a matter of time before you’re all on the same page?

All roster changes are strictly my decision and I think I have made only correct ones so far. The players had no problems adjusting, the latest addition to the roster was oVie and Pengu. I think it was less than a week before the chemistry started coming in again after the roster changes. By now we are all on the same page majority of the time.

In what ways has playing with your team improved you as a player?

Really hard question, I guess communication and also trust. I have always had a mindset that if I will not carry myself, nobody else will and we will lose (mainly thanks to Dota2 – 5.6k mid/carry here) Playing Siege with my cherry-picked roster, players wich I consider the best Europe has to offer, has given me the ability to trust other people that they will do their job. I am no longer the main fragger when we are competing since calling for the entire team and topfragging at the same time is simply not possible unless Im having a really good game.

How would you describe your playstyle as on att and def and your role in the team?

Playstyle? Aggressive or over-aggressive, often times I just yolo in and see what happens. I have always been like that. In Starcraft, Dota2, CS. I usually pressure my opponents and as soon as I see them struggle, it gives me confidence. Most times they will crumble under the pressure sooner or later. Its all about the execution of the aggression and raw skill of the player. As for having a role in my team, I am the main lurker / rotation player on defense and I always pressure from a different direction than the rest of the team so its easier to execute and enter the bombsite for them on attack. I also choose what spawns are we going to defend in what order, I veto and pick maps, I am the author or co-author of most of our defensive setups, I try to keep the team calm and collected.

Who are your main operators in matches and why?

Sledge, sometimes Buck or Glaz. On defense Jager, sometimes pulse or smoke. On attack I sometimes support from range, that’s where the Buck CARMS gun or glaz gun comes in. Usually I pressure a different direction than the rest of the team like I mentioned before, so sledge is ideal for that. I can make my own way in with the hammer plus I love the small SMG with ACOG on it. On defense I use jager and usually roam with it. Trying to trade my life for an important attacking operator before he spends his resources (for example killing thermite before he uses exo-charge) is my daily bread – that goes in hand with my agressive playstyle.

ESL recently changed the rules to reflect the ranked playlist where you can’t choose the same spawn twice in a row. Do you think this was a good change to introduce for the viewers and players to keep things “fresh”?

Yes, it is good every team has to defend at least 2 different spots if they want to win. This will definetly make the game more entertaining to watch but it also makes it more fun to play and most importantly – it deepens the skill-cap and knowledge-cap quite a lot.

How are you enjoying Black Ice, how did you find the new operators? Will they be used in matches?

The Yacht map is all right but too big for a 3:00 timer. The new operators are I would say tier 1.5 – not instapick, but very decent. I think giving Buck HE grenades would make him tier 1 but there would have to be a limit of only maximum of 2 players on attacking having HE grenades. Allowing attackers to have 6 instead of 4 would be really broken

What are the most underlying issues with Siege in your opinion that needs to be addressed for competitive play?

Netcode (the hybrid client-side crap) and unsufficient anti-cheat for tournament with such a high profile.

Do you think the shield recruit is OP?

The good old Care_Bear meta game. It is not OP anymore ever since they nerfed the ADS mechanic. Maybe if the devs gave us a shield operator that isn’t a slow cow – a walking C4 magnet, shield recruit would have never even been discovered.

There was rampant hackusations before ESL wire was introduced, do you think it’s enough to ensure fairplay? What more could be done?

All Im going to say is that I hope I will get to play the players I strongly suspect of hacking in the proscene at the moment on LAN – Katowice for instance. For starters anyone who has been fairfighted in the past for whatever reason should automatically be excluded from any kind of competition. A screenshot programm that would take screenshots and send them in every 2 seconds (or even less) wouldn’t hurt. They just need to update the anti-cheat and add more layers to it because right now is it not sufficient.

Who do you consider to be the top 5 teams in Siege at the moment?

Well the 3 teams who already amassed enough points to ensure a pro league spot are AERA, PENTA and GiFu. After these 3 I would say gBots. 5th pick is really hard, could really be anyone. I also have no idea how good are the teams outside of EU, but me and my teammates watched some NA streams and they don’t seem like anything special – maybe some of the NA teams will surprise me.

Do you have any tips for players looking to improve in Siege?

Play the game and play it a lot. Record yourself playing and see what mistakes you made. Watching someone or playing against someone who is way above your level of play is a good way to improve rapidly as long as you can absorb the knowledge. As for people who want to play this game at the highest level, I recommend making yourself a fragging machine before searching for a team.

Some would say your team are unpopular despite consistently placing top 3 in various cups, why do you think there’s a degree of hostility towards PENTA?

That is mainly because of me and my attitude towards people. I am not afraid to callout someone out on their bullshit publicly, no matter how dirty my name will get. People don’t want to hear the truth sometimes. I also straight-up refused probably somewhere around 50 people when I was forming PENTA (ReFL3X.team at that point of time) and kicked I think 6 players after accepting them to the team – after spending some time with them, competing, they just didn’t seem to have that extra something I was looking for. On top of everything, I never sugercoat things unless I really have to. Overall I would say there is only one person in the entire community that is actually hostile towards PENTA, the rest just doesn’t really care.

Your team seems to be on track in the qualifiers, how will you handle the pressure of playing on LAN and having thousands of viewers online watching your every move?

I sincerely hope we will handle it well. Most of us have never been to a LAN of such gigantic size, but we will train as a team, go there as a team, play as team and hopefully win as team.

Being a young team, do you see this as an advantage in Siege where you rely more on your fast reactions opposed to more experienced players?

I would say we are an old team with new players. Me, S4i, rendier and even Pengu are definetly very experienced. oVie was not playing for a top tier team until I offered him a spot in my roster, but his insane fragging abilities make up for any kind of inexperience he has, plus he is a fast learner.

Any special areas your team need to improve on?

We can always improve in every single way, I think its consistency of our communication. I don’t think consistency frag-wise is a problem, because my players live and breathe the game. However sometimes we stop communicating the way we should and its usually hard to fix mid-game. Overall the team is improving very fast and I am proud of the results.

Do you think it’s fair that Spain and Italy have regional qualifiers?

Spain? Definetely. But in case of the Italian qualifier I need to side with the German community. There are simply way more German teams and I felt like they deserved the regional qualifier more. While it is always great to have many international opponents, having the best teams for the Proleague should be a priority

Any last words to the R6 Siege competitive scene?

I would like to thank Ubisoft and ESL for giving us the opportunity to play this game on a professional level. I hope they prioritize the development of ESL and Ubisoft anticheat measures as without them a fair competition will not be possible. At the moment I consider anti-cheat very insufficient.

Thanks to A1ga for taking time to answer our questions, we wish them good luck in future tournaments. You can connect with A1ga on Twitch

Interview done by Deosl