The first week of NAL is over and with it comes quite no surprises. Spacestation Gaming looks dangerous, though not always polished, OXG immediately hit the ground running with Yoggah, and the Soniqs are doing the exact opposite of what we expected of them. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary
Going into this Stage the expectations around the Soniqs was that they would dominate, not only because of all the superstar talent on the roster. This was a team that was expected to potentially win SI23 and come into a Major threat. With the massive shakeup in NA, sQ was at a clear advantage over the competition by simply having done nothing at all. Every other team had to adjust to new players or create chemistry from a completely new team. Meanwhile the Soniqs just had to build off of the (admittedly underwhelming) Six Invitational. That only makes it all the more concerning that the Soniq Boom hasn’t taken off the way it was expected to.
At first glance the results aren’t that concerning. A max OT loss to SSG isn’t a deal breaker and beating Parabellum in a clean 7-3 is to be expected. But losing to Beastcoast in what equated to a fight in the mud? Now thats a problem. As a staunch advocate for MrB there should be no world where a Beastcoast with 3 days of practice takes down the Soniqs.
Everything I’ve just said isn’t news to anyone. The upset happened, no one save MrB saw it coming, recover, review, go next. What I’m worried about is that the Soniqs will misdiagnose the problems they had in the match against Beastcoast.
In a 7-5 loss there’s any number of factors you can look at and say “If we had done this differently we could’ve won that round.” But that’s a dangerous trap. Yes, it could have been an incorrect decision but teams can easily get swept into results based analysis with that line of thinking if they’re not careful.
That play was wrong because you lost the round off it, not because it was a high risk/high reward option that didn’t pan out. Such analysis avoids reviewing the real lessons in a vod. It’s a way to to option select players and teams use when they lose a match they aren’t supposed to. If it works, great! “Wow, look at how I shit on that dude, they’re trash.” If it doesn’t work? “The vibes were off,” “I had an off day,” “They play so weird,” all the usual scrubquotes.
But I’m not here to say high risk high reward plays are bad, or that sQ shouldn’t make those plays. Given their talent, they should be going for those ballsy plays because they can get away with so much more than the average team. Take the double spawnpeek on Round 8 for instance, it seems like a dumb play because it put sQ at an immediate 3v5 and let Beastcoast tie up the round count. But it wasn’t inherently a bad play.
Soniqs did it as a team, increasing their chances of success, and had taken a calculated risk. Had the spawnpeek worked this match likely would’ve been a different result. Put yourself in bC’s shoes for that round:
You got ruined day 1 by OXG, and this match vs sQ is rough. Your Defense was horrible. One of your rounds was a clutch, and you barely got that 2-4 half. On Attack there’s so much work to be done. You win the first round decisively and finally get some momentum going, this next round is a chance to tie up the game…
What would’ve happened if one or two of your players got picked off at the start of the round? Even if you went one for one, it would’ve been devastating. The Soniqs would have gotten away with a massively disrespectful play, would have killed the Hibana or Sledge immediately and would subsequently be in pole position to confirm a 5-3 lead, stuffing whatever momentum had been building the last two rounds for Beastcoast.
The spawnpeek was a high risk/high reward play that didn’t pan out. I don’t hate it because it was clearly a decision made as a team and not an individual. It wasn’t a bad call, the cards just didn’t play out in the Soniq’s favor. If high risk/high reward was inherently bad both Forrest and Merc would be out of the scene by now.
But I worry that plays like this, and other, smaller decisions will get blamed for the loss. To protect egos players will hide their heads in the sand and blame some select plays rather than fundamental issues in the set up, the comms, the calling, or the teamplay. This would put Soniqs in a dangerous position similar to that of the original SSG core at the end, slowly stagnating despite clear talent. SQ aren’t as dominant as they should be. They aren’t a lock to the Majors and they aren’t guaranteed to win their upcoming matches against DZ and OXG with this level of play.
If sQ opts to blame the wrong aspects of their gameplay to protect egos, this team will not improve. Rather, all that star power collected on one team will be wasted away as other teams rise to challenge the Majors. With the superstar talent present on this roster I’d rather see them pop off at a Major, but that requires some hard talks after what they’ve shown in the first week. Esports teams are notorious for not always being willing to face the music, so we can only hope the Soniqs are willing to sit down and have the hard discussions necessary to adjust. Otherwise we can forget seeing a boom, we’ll be in for a Soniq Bust.