This week we sit down with UKIN Caster, Fresh! 

We’re back with UKIN for Summer ‘21 and we’re going to sit down with community members, players and caster to discuss everything UKIN and Rainbow Six Siege!

So, to kick things off, for those who might not know you, who is Fresh? 

They always ask “Who is Fresh?” never “How is Fresh”?

My real name is Jack Allen and I’m a professional Rainbow Six analyst having worked within various professional teams for the past few years at a Tier 1 level. I’m also currently working with a project team called Delta Project with the aim of developing the support staff working on that project to a professional level.

In addition to that, I’ve been lured into becoming on-screen broadcast talent, firstly with UKIN Division 2 and now progressing through into UKIN Premier Division working mainly as a colour caster and providing post-game analysis in the analyst segments

When were you first introduced to Rainbow Six Siege?

Upon release on Xbox. Actually, I put the game down for about 3 months because I played about 2/3 days after release and my first operator chosen was Twitch. I tried to jump on her drone and (obviously) it wouldn’t jump. As such I thought the game wasn’t well thought out and stopped playing. I picked it back up 3 months later, realised the error in my ways and never looked down.

Competitively I started watching quite late into the scene – late 2017. I decided that I wanted to become professional support staff after 2019 Six Invitational.

When you have time to play, who are your go-to operators?

Attack- I’ve been liking a lot of sledge recently! But play absolutely anything

Defence – Mute, I’m absolutely terrible with the loadout but at least all of the sites are constructed correctly with the correct rotates in place

You were more known as a professional analyst, for the likes of G2 and Chaos, how has the change been to on-screen talent?

Strange. The analysis side of esports has a lot of transferrable pieces. For example, most analysts at a Tier 1 level will collect granular data and interpret that using data validation to objectively answer and support any conclusions made on a subjective level, this is very transferrable to my “day job”, in which I do the exact same thing but with just a different data set (Financial data as opposed to Siege data).

When it comes to on-screen talent, there are a plethora of skills that are completely new and alien to me, all of the “on camera” skills, being able to get hype and match a co-casters pacing. It's been a lot of fun learning and developing on that side of it and I hope to continue on this journey!

This is your first proper season of UKIN Premier, how have you found it so far?

Its been absolutely great, especially when I have a few friends across the teams competing so being able to dunk on them has been something I enjoyed. They had a few dunks on me when I got relegated in my previous team so to get on back has been entertaining.

I’ve actually been quite frustrated with some of the teams though because there have been a few underperformers with issues that are very easily fixed that in my opinion that could have had a much better run. Victus and Tenstar come to mind as two teams that had much higher ceilings than they had on show and could have done much better just for a little bit better composure and experience. Hopefully we see both teams back next UKIN and ready to make that progression up the league.

Out of our four final teams, who is making the Grand Finals?

NaVi and Viperio 86 would make an absolutely sensational Grand Final in my opinion, it feels like this is the matchup that everyone wants given they’re the only 2 teams at UKIN with full rosters.

Create your own team - you are the coach, what 5 players are you picking up? It can be any player Pro or Am across the world.

Fabiana

Pengu

Doki

CTZN

Brid

I’ve said this a couple of times, I’d love to see Doki and CTZN back in the same team given both players current form. Fabian and Pengu in their prime are untouchable, especially as a duo. Brid finally is the consistent rock for BDS and the best current support player in the world so I couldn’t not include him!

Any final comments or places for people to follow you?

@FreshCasts on Twitter! That’s the place I’m most active and will be posting my predictions curse for every playday of UKIN and EUL!