Coming hot off his time casting the NA Closed Qualifiers I caught up with Fellow to discuss the recent matches, the collegiate Columbus Invitational and collegiate’s place in competitive Siege.
A video of this interview can be found here:
Here I am with Fellow the Challenger League caster. Just recently off of a Six Invitational Qualifier broadcast in which Spacestation Gaming qualified for the Six Invitational over the likes of TSM, Mirage, and Reality TV. I guess we’ll start there because it’s the obvious topic, how do you think the quals went?
I’d say fairly expected. You’ve got SSG where all their players are veterans, they’ve been around the block. We on broadcast mentioned how well Bosco has performed in the past in qualifiers similar to this so a lot of us expected TSM/SSG being those final contenders. You have both World Champion caliber teams and then you’ve got wildcard picks, like Mirage and RTV, where I think we also said on broadcasts, that Mirage is still building their identity, because they have new pickups. They quite literally just removed Kento and brought on Hyper, so they still had a lot to build off of. And it was kind of similar with RealityTV, where the Pro League scene is still fairly new to them as a whole because they’re from Challenger League and they dropped, I believe it was Valor. Not dropped, he ended up quitting on his own accord. Which, fair enough. They ended up picking Ryce who had fairly similar roles to Valor and also Packer, who was the original catalyst of all the new pickups when they were doing SCS, for example. So a lot of different teams and a lot of different ways they like to play all just bundled up into one qualifier. It was gonna be a good time from the start. But you also could kind of figure out what’s likely to happen
SSG is actually a really interesting story because they didn’t just win, they played literally everyone in the qualifier to get through. They played RealityTV first, lost. That put them in the lower bracket. Then they had to play Mirage, and then to win the whole thing they had to beat TSM. They didn’t just go through the bracket, they literally beat every other team to prove it. What do you think about their performance in particular? Because I think it definitely showed a lot of strength, but also definitely some weakness as well.
I think you could tell that for SSG, the element of surprise was a very big thing favoring RealityTV. Sure, you’re probably scrimming them once in a while, because everyone’s in that same tight knit group when they’re looking for scrims for any kind of game day practice, but what you can get in experience on game day is just night and day from doing scrims. They’ve never played against RealityTV in any kind of environment that hasn’t been just scrims.
So you get Border for example, where they don’t know how RTV systematically plays in the early round, mid round and late round. Funny enough, you probably knew a little bit more once you had that interview with Fett because he had a lot of good insight on how they like to play on that map. I think it was like the LG Best of 1 you guys discussed?
Yeah.
You have that lack of game day experience so they [SSG] get blasted a little bit by RTV. Then they go into another Best of 3, probably a little more tired but more prepared to play against the new competition, that being Mirage. It’s very back and forth because they have a couple of, not a couple of troll rounds, but they have a couple of rounds where they definitely should have won but then somehow in a really bad position Mirage comes back from it. I don’t know as much from the Mirage match they played because that was off stream and I think we only caught like the tail end of it. Apparently they smoked Mirage on Bank, which is probably why they were very confident going back to it against RTV.
As far as the SSG/Mirage game, I think it was SSG smoked on Bank, were up like 5-1 on Defense on Oregon and then choked at 7-5 if memory serves, and then map three was like a 7-5 slugfest?
Yeah it was kind of a similar choke on Club if I recall correctly. But they still kept calm and collected and they still won. So that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. And now that they have gameday experience against RTV, the one 1-Up they had against them, is now out the window. And we could tell on the desk and like just the general talent group, that RTV wanting to go back to Border was a very desperate attempt at salvaging, winning their match against SSG to then rematch TSM, which was a bloodbath.
Bank, they [RTV] didn’t necessarily make a lot of mistakes but TSM was just using their strengths of having really consistent gunners and knowing where the isolated attackers were going to be in the early round to make it a 5v4 almost every round. And historically speaking RTV is not strong at winning entry engagements. They’ll get into opening gunfights, but winning them it’s another story. They like to try to equalize in the mid round by looking for trades. Again, Fett probably really gave you a lot of good insight on that. But the problem is doing that against Pro League teams is significantly more difficult than Challenger League teams. I think that just goes without saying. So it really did seem like a lot of rounds they were out of their element, because they were almost always on the backfoot from the start. And TSM and SSG didn’t give them a lot of opportunities to bounce that back, especially on day number two.
For RTV in particular, I think even Mr. B himself admitted this, when they lost Gaveni, they lost that tip of the spear. They lost that entry with that it factor of “I gotta get in there, and I’m gonna bash your face in to do it,” and so they had to completely revamp how they’ve attacked. It’s definitely effective in Challenger League, but I think you’re completely right that against Pro League caliber teams it does not nearly work as well. I just want to get your thoughts about the way TSM played, because they had a pretty good go of it, they struggled a bit against Mirage, cleaned up RTV pretty well, and then SSG: their first ever 7-0 since the org has joined the scene.
Yeah. That was beyond impressive on Bank because both of those teams are very solid on Bank in particular. I think they played against one another in NAL, and I think that game ended 7-5 in Stage 3 between SSG and TSM. It was a very, fairly close game. I went and double checked to see if it went to overtime and it did not, so that’s why I remember the 7-5 in particular. But both of them know what to do on Bank, obviously. But I think the fact that SSG quite literally had a game day warm up against RTV on Bank, they were probably a lot more geared up to go play on Bank again against TSM.
And something that Snake had mentioned to me in his Twitch chat, because every now and again I’ll go and just talk to him. See what he’s doing, see how the FPL Queue is going. He talked about it, one example was their Heroic match in the Jönköping Major. A lot of teams over the span of stages, they will not change strats too frequently on a lot of maps. So Heroic, for example, did a bunch of book work on how TSM likes to play on Clubhouse so they knew what to do and how exactly to counter strat against every single plan that TSM would theoretically bring out on game day. So they hastily won that match. I could imagine SSG probably did the same thing. They’ve got great staffing behind them. They’re all veterans of the game.
The army of analysts.
Yeah. I mean, they just knew what to expect going into Bank. And they quite literally just played that map hours ago.
With all that, now we have SSG 100% through to the Six Invitational. Do you think they’re gonna go far? Because I definitely think they’re strong. They definitely have that international experience and I think they’re more of a LAN team than a regional team, if that makes sense. They play better internationally against the international teams. Do you think they’re a contender to make a deep run here?
I’d say so. Again, they’ve got a lot of good experience playing internationally, so they know how to adapt when they need to. They’re probably one of the stronger looking teams going into SI for North America. Because of how many changes have happened with other teams. Soniqs is a good example. They have made changes, but in my opinion, not a lot of major changes besides the CTZN pickup, who, he’s a solid player so I’m sure that’s not going to be too big of an issue. CTZN also has a lot of international experience since G2 has qual’d for a good chunk of Majors. So they’re probably one of the stronger looking teams going into SI for North America.
Astralis And DarkZero for example, having Gaveni and Spiff, both playing in the biggest stage they have ever seen or ever competed in, period. That could put on a lot of pressure for them that might have a bit of underperformance issues. But they’re both good players. If they’re able to just keep it pretty calm and concise, then we could still see Astralis and DarkZero do well. But overall, yeah, I think SSG having all their, I’ve mentioned several times now, but having all these veteran players who have all been top tier at one point during an SI run. You know, Soniqs with Yeti, they were top six. I think several players that are on SSG, obviously not just winning SI but also just getting to the top. That in particular, I mean, it’s gonna go a long way.
Backtracking a little bit. I want to talk about that collegiate LAN you went to because I don’t think it’s an understatement to say this is like the fourth or fifth LAN event in the entire Siege calendar, especially for NA. Even if you count the NAL, that’s what, three LAN stages? And this is the first one for T2. What was it like having that LAN experience?
It’s always fun. I’ve done LAN events a handful of times for collegiate leagues because they’re usually the ones who have just random amounts of money, they can just dump into lands and make it somewhat viable. Because collegiate will pay a lot of money to have events like that hosted. It cost 1000s of dollars to get your team signed up for a LAN event like that. There was one I did for a group called NACE and that one was also backed in a venue that is run by NSG. They had their venue over in Philadelphia called The Block. So again, a lot of money can go into this stuff because collegiate just has that kind of backing.
But to go a little bit back on track, it’s always fun and unique being in a LAN environment. Doing remote broadcasting, it has its own pros and cons. A big pro is just the convenience you can work from home. But a big con is not having that same experience with your co-commentator, it makes it a lot more challenging to have a genuine conversation with them most of the time. But in LAN, you can do hand signals, you can tap them on the shoulder, you can point stuff out to them, you can be on the same wavelength at a much easier rate compared to doing remote commentary, which, especially when doing something like SI closed quals where you’re casting Pro League teams or teams that are just on the cusp of being Pro League, where you have to be on your A game, doing that in an in person studio can be significantly easier at points compared to remote.
But also LAN events can have their own issues like ISPs, which has on record done a lot of trolling for specific LAN events. I think SI closed quals last year had a major issue with that. The collegiate event I did a year ago in South Bend, we had an ISP issue as well on one day. All the computers were to shut down for like several hours, which really put us behind schedule and one of the more important days. So everything you want to take into account is going to have its pros and cons. But doing a LAN is almost always fun.
Do you have to change up the way that you cast? I know something that is mentioned by legacy casters like Semmler is when casting and LAN, when casting in arenas, which I know obviously collegiate event, not in the Spodek or anything, but you have to change the way that you’re casting so as to not reveal information to players that are in the same building or same room as you?
Usually you take that into consideration. So if it’s the teams that you’re broadcasting, you’re going to try to put them as far away from the commentary booth as possible. Especially if you do what we ended up having for most of the days at the Columbus LAN, which was having us visible to all the contenders in the venue instead of putting us in a little booth in the background, which we ended up doing for Grand Finals. But for the regular play days, we were just feet away from some of the players that were actually in matches. Sometimes that could affect them, they could sometimes hear us through the headsets if we got really loud for a play by play moment. But for the most part it tends to not coincide with players and then commentators when we’re both trying to do our thing, especially when you have the people that you’re casting basically, across the venue as far away from you as possible.
In major arenas, some of that hype is going to follow up with what you’re casting because you have the audience now to kind of help do your job as well. They’re really great suspense builders. And they’re also really good at having that high end hype that you almost always want to look for with a beautiful play.
I want to know about the position of collegiate siege because it’s kind of seen where the Canadian Pro League was when the NAL first launched, where it’s like, T1.5 and collegiate is like T3.5, or 3b to the 3a of Tier 3. Where does collegiate place in the competitive circuit?
For simplicity’s sake, at least for me, I tend to call collegiate just like T4 because it’s its own thing. T4 is usually what I describe as most collegiate leagues and then you also have beginning leagues as well. But some people don’t prefer doing that and they like to bundle everything as Tier 3 or like you said, Tier 3.5 for collegiate specifically. Or just have it as its own thing. That’s also completely fair, everyone still kind of knows what we’re all talking about.
But the reason why collegiate is usually put in a different variety as just regular T3 is for a couple of reasons. One, you have the limitations of collegiate. They don’t really like outsiders. And also the level of competition is very different from collegiate compared to T3 because you’re gonna have way more teams that are playing inside of collegiate compared to just regular T3. I think it was 64 teams ended up playing in the qualifiers roughly, maybe even less than that for SFCL. I really can’t remember off the top of my head, it might be way less than that. But for a collegiate, even if you have that same number, it’s not just qualifiers, you’re gonna have several different divisions so everyone can play. Because their organization, like I mentioned with the LAN, for example, they’re all paying for their teams to play in these leagues and have competition. I wouldn’t say it’s kind of like the NCAA, but it’s like every division can have a team that plays it’s kind of the same aspect except its esports.
You get your game day reps.
Exactly, exactly. So it’s just, you get way more teams. Some are good, some suck. That’s just kind of how it is. That’s how it is with regular sports as well. You just got way more teams that play.
And then you’ll see examples like, I think it was OSU? Yeah. They were the ones that were Collegiate Connoisseurs for SCS. You will see, on occasion, players that are actually pretty good at the game, either mechanically, or they just have a very good understanding of how the game just works in general. So you had somebody like Wakko, where he just dropped 16 every game and it’s like, yeah, well, of course they’re gonna win. They have a very consistent gunner, who knows how to play in this environment. The collegiate scene compared to T3 is also a very different environment because of all the different little cogs that turn inside of the collegiate scene compared to just T3.
I was gonna ask about Collegiate Connoisseurs and SCS, because I think it was a really good litmus test of how collegiate ranks against the rest of the scene. Do you think that collegiate pipeline has any potential in the future? Or is this where it’s going to be, where it’s kind of Tier 3 and it can be at the edge of Tier 2, but those players are going to have to take the leap at some point?
So the way it is right now, collegiate with a very wide, broad amount of people that play in it, it can have a very bad stigma with like players in collegiate just not being as good compared to regular amateur players. Which, you know, that’s fair. But you’re still gonna get, on occasion, players that are actually very good at the game and can hold their own in T3. I know, IceCold for a good point of time was trying to contend in T3 for a while. He was on and off with being a super sub for certain teams or just flat out being on a team in general that would be close to qualifying for something like SFCL for example. I think he was on NSO, which was a team that made it pretty far in that qualifier run.
So in general, it’s still kind of a rougher stigma around collegiate but I have said this for a while. I even got backlash for it forever ago back in like SFCL Season 3.
Really?
Yeah, some guy was like on Twitter being like, “no way someone on a broadcast said that this collegiate team can be on top of T3.” I don’t really remember the full details and I mean, it kind of was fair. But this was like a year ago or whatever. But you know, the top collegiate teams could contend in T3 at a fairly feasible level. I think not only Collegiate Connoisseurs is a good example of that but also Hong Kong Rebels, because one of their main players; RyRy, also dawned from collegiate.
And his team wasn’t even the best team in collegiate, he was just a top four, sometimes top two team. They won the Purdue Invitational, which was in South Bend, Indiana, and that was really the last event they had actually won. They would always be like the runner ups for winning like CR6 Stage 1, Season Seven, or the next LAN they ended up doing. Funny enough, they lost to OSU in the Columbus Invitational, which was reversed about a year ago. NC State clobbered OSU a year ago so it was a bittersweet revenge. And it was like changing the guard almost, because now OSU is that top collegiate team and they’re also fairly decent in T3. Because the T3 teams they played against, like Eclectic, they did very well against them. That staved them off of relegation. So, you know, the stigma is kind of dying, but it’s still definitely there.
The last place I’ll end this on is expectations for the Six Invitational because I know that’s the big thing. What are your expectations for the event? Who’s going to win it? What regions are gonna profit the most, like any 0-3ers or 0-5ers?
I’d have to say despite LATAM not technically winning anything yet, teams like W7M that have shown constant improvement throughout the year definitely have a good chance of winning SI. I think a lot of LATAM teams going into this look solid. A couple of EU teams, we saw BDS have a wonderful performance, just last Major. The Wolves have always been pretty consistent. So again, a lot of good runner ups that could win SI and you could give a feasible argument. Except for, I don’t know, I would suppose maybe APAC because they’ve had a very rough year as a whole. They’ve had a lot of short fallings, even when they qual for Majors. It just doesn’t really go their way which kind of sucks, but you’re gonna have years like that. I remember NA back in, what was it like 2021, right after they won SI? They had a really rough time against LATAM. That was a very dominant year for LATAM as a whole and even the year after that they still held on pretty well, and they still look good going into 2023. So despite LATAM not winning anything technically, I think they’re, not going to be a dark horse, but they’re going to be very scary.
Anything you want to close out with? Anyone you want to shout out?
I mean, I guess the talent crew I’ve been working with for a long time now. Not just the people in CL who I obviously just finished up with a week ago for SI closed quals, but all the people I got to work with at the Columbus Invitational. It’s always good seeing those guys in person because a lot of them are my actual friends who I met before I got really involved in casting, but I still either work with on the rare occasion or just hang out with outside of work. My Twitter @ is FellowTheCaster, you can go follow that if you want. I think I said the quote “I’m not your dad so you don’t have to listen to me” so I’ll say that once again.
And yeah, that’s mostly it, just a lot of the people who I’ve worked with and who have given me opportunities to keep working so I can end up meeting people like you, and doing small interviews like that because these are always pretty fun. I’d like to say it’s interesting, having someone ask you questions just off, not off the RIP because I know you have all these notes jotted down in preparation for this, but like, getting to see what I’m going to say about some of the potential questions. It’s always interesting. I didn’t even think you would bring up the Columbus Invitational because not many people that are outside of the collegiate scene really knew that was happening. But I’m glad it got a little bit traction outside of just collegiate.