Category: Esports

NRG AND Sentinels Are OUT Of Masters Shanghai After Shocking Stage 1 Performances

The Masters Madrid winners and arguably the best team in the world, Sentinels, are out of contention for Masters Shanghai after failing to qualify for the play-offs in VCT Americas.

Dropping games to Evil Geniuses, Leviatan and LOUD mean that they were mathematically eliminated from play-offs as only the top three teams from their group made it through with G2 making it above them in round differential by just two rounds.

However, another team that has let the world down, is NRG. They go out of play-offs after not even qualifying for one international event so far after losing to Sentinels in VCT Americas kick-off and now bombing out of Stage 1 despite having, on paper, the best roster in the world, with the additions of Demon1 and Ethan who were from the world champions winning side Evil Geniuses and Demon1 being the most sought after player in the world.

Despite being two of the best players from that squad of 5 from last year, they were unable to defeat any of their former team mates this year which included an utterly embarrassing defeat to Leviatan where they only managed a total of 8 rounds across the two maps. Leviatan is now home to c0m who won the Champions title alongside Demon1 and Ethan.

On paper, Sentinels and NRG should have had near to no problems making it through to play offs with the compeition in their group being the 2023 worst team in Americas, KRU and the ”tier 2” Cloud9, who both majorly over performed and went 5-1 in their series whilst SEN and NRG went 3-3 shocking the world.

VCT Americas Kick-off start tonight with Cloud9 playing G2 Esports looking to knock each other out of play-offs in this one and done game.

Another knockout game could see LOUD dropping out of Master Shanghai contention with a tough game against 100Theives who already look a lot better than their kick-off form with Champions winning IGL, Boostio, transforming this roster after putting Cryo, onto the smokes role and allowing Asuna to take up the Raze as he used to do back in 2021.

These games will decide who will go on to face off against KRU Esports and Leviatan with both of those teams looking on form hoping for a spot in Masters Shanghai to Join Paper Rex, T1, GenG from the APAC side with the other regions yet to play off.

LOUD Shatter Sentinels Chances of Masters Shanghai

Sentinels’ chances of Masters Shangai is now up in flames with LOUD getting their first win of the split against the current champions.

Sentinels going down to LOUD now means that their chance of their qualification mainly lands into the hands of other teams losing with them needing NRG and G2 to lose BOTH of their games for Sentinels to make it to play-offs.

Despite LOUD not having a win all split after going down to Leviatan, Cloud9 and KRU, they turned up and played Sentinels down to a level that just isn’t acceptable in SEN fans eyes.

SEN now go on to face off against FURIA with the only game they have remaining is set to be played this weekend in the final week of Split 1 for VCT Americas.

LOUD’s chances for playoffs are very alive due to their group being the poorest group of all VCT with two teams going 0-4 and the final spot being contested between two other teams whilst Leviatan takes the lead for the group after taking down NRG and Sentinels.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

After an un-characteristically bad performance from Zellsis he went 16 kills across the two maps and Sacy was the only player on Sentinels to keep his frags consistent.

On the other side, cauanzin had a strong return to form after being the bottom frag of the side for the first 3 matches, he turned up and dropped 41 kills on Sentinels and looked to be on a revenge tour of the remaining matches in the split.

KRU Stay UNDEFEATED in VCT Americas After 2-0 LOUD

Lionel Messi’s Co-Owned VALORANT team, KRU Esports, has retained their unbeaten record. They are the only team in the world of VCT that has remained unbeaten going into week 5 of VCT, with VCT China still awaiting their Week 4 of games.

KRU Esports went 0-9 in their regular season last year in VCT with their only highlights coming in their Last Chance Qualifier and eventually making it to VCT Champions. They seem to be the opposite of last years peformance after going 4-0 in regular season matches taking down LOUD in their superweek. The LATAM side have now made the Brazilian Giants go to 0-3.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

The introduction of heat into the KRU side has put them onto the right track with their Kick-Off performance not up to scratch. However, they were without heat, after their poor performance in kick-off, they added the ex-MIBR player heat into their roster and have been on fire since.

Last year, heat was the duelist player for MIBR and now on KRU he has become the initiator player and seems to be thriving alongside his teammate, keznit who is still one of the top duelists in VCT Americas.

Similar to TenZ, ZmjjKK and Sayf, the duelist players from 2023 have now moved onto a more flexible role and moved off of duelist to allow other players to take up that role and take their team to another level.

KRU are now set to play their 2 remaining games against 100Thieves and Leviatan, where they are expected to make playoffs anyway, they are looking towards a 6-0 record for their split looking towards Masters Shanghai.

Lionel Messi, who became co-owners of KRU alongside Sergio Aguero, late last year, posted for their win on Instagram after they retained their unbeaten record and now their fanbase is growing even more with the addition of two SUPERSTAR footballers.

Evil Geniuses SHOCK Masters Champions in VCT Americas

Sentinels are now under huge pressure with a 2-1 loss to Evil Geniuses give them their second loss of the split making their play-off chances slim after a dominant kick-off tournament and then taking the Masters Madrid trophy back home.

After a ridculous 9-3 comeback on Lotus, Sentinels took the map and went up 10-2 on Bind with most fans saying it was just another standard win for SEN City. However, it wasn’t meant to be with a shocking comeback from Evil Geniuses took them to map 3.

Map 3 was Sunset where it was very back and forth between the rounds and they were extremely shared with the two most recent international winners.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

With jawgemo coming back to Champions form on the Raze, he took over the first map which ended up going in the favour of Sentinels despite dropping 23 kills in the first half. He then had a steadily great performance across the next three maps where he was consistently great.

After going down 2-0 to Leviatan, SEN now go down 2-1 to Evil Geniuses who have shown that it wasn’t a fluke last year with the remaining Potter and jawgemo still creating greatness with a new roster.

To make play-offs comfortably now, Sentinels need to take down LOUD and FURIA whilst they need the other teams in their group to have poor games for the remainder of this split.

Sentinels next game is against a poor LOUD side who are currently sat 0-3 in their group despite being one of only two teams that made it to Masters Madrid with the trophy eventually coming back to Americas but to Sentinels rather than LOUD.

Leviatan DOMINATE NRG During Superweek

The ‘Super Team’ of VCT Americas, NRG, got humbled against Leviatan, after hyping up the team and their chances of winning it all, NRG are looking below par of what they are used to indivdually. Demon1 no longer is showing the firepower that he had last year on Evil Geniuses despite now being the centre of attention on the squad.

Leviatan, a super team in their own right, absolutely dominated NRG last night with NRG only allowed to take 8 rounds from 2 maps, an even more impressive and overwhelming victory than Sentinels against MIBR on Saturday. NRG having only played teams that you could call ‘not contenders’ and when they play world class teams they seem to crumble against Sentinels and now Leviatan.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

NRG really had a shocking performance against the LATAM giants who just came off the back of a 2-0 win over Sentinels aswell.

Demon1, who was the MVP of VCT Champions 2023, dropped 13 kills across the two maps instead of dominating like he did last year. aspas, who has been called the GOAT of Valorant, dropped 34 kills and looked unbothered that he was striking down the MVP of Champions 2023.

NRG have started to create a reputation for themselves for being toxic and super confident in themselves despite not having the results to back it up. Victor, before the game said that it was going to be easy, and it ended up being somewhat the opposite and it seemed that Leviatan took control of map control, rotations and even NRG’s aim seemed off during the matchup.

Before the matchup, Demon1, said in an interview that

”I will take care of aspas”

Those words came back to bite him as the ended the match with 2 first kills and 15 first deaths across the two maps.

NRG now look ahead to their next game against MIBR which should be an easy game, and Leviatan look ahead to G2 Esports which seems straight forward after the results they got against Sentinels and NRG over the past 2 weeks.

Cloud9 SHOCK LOUD With 2-1 Victory

Cloud9 now go 3-0 in Stage 1 of VCT Americas after shocking the Brazilian giants, LOUD, 2-1 in a banger of a match between the two sides that got 1st and 2nd place in VCT Americas League last season.

Cloud9 but up an admirable fight on Bind but eventually lost the map 13-11 to LOUD but bounced back only letting LOUD have 13 rounds across the next two maps. Cloud9 took Icebox 13-4 and then Lotus 13-9 with OXY topping the charts and dominating the server with 63 frags.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

After comments at the beginning of the year from Demon1, saying that OXY is the worst duelist in Americas, he seemed to have taken that in and is proving the world Champion duelist wrong with multiple aces already in the opening stage of VCT Americas.

After spending the first year of franchising on G2 Esports in Tier 2 of VALORANT, he got his chance in the top tier of VALORANT with Cloud9 picking him up and sticking by him through their 3 roster changes that they have made so far this stage.

That proved to be the right decision with OXY showing Demon1 and other people who have doubted him that he is here to create waves throughout the VALORANT world and hopefully make it to an international LAN through this with Shanghai.

Cloud9 now go on to face 100 Thieves later on tonight with hopes of them going 4-0 in the regular season with LOUD being shocked and going 0-2 in this part of the season with their hopes of play-offs looking bleak already despite being one of the two sides to make it to Masters Madrid alongside the winners, Sentinels.

Sentinels Take Down MIBR in Comfortable 2-0 Fashion

Sentinels kick-off the VCT Americas Superweek with a well furnished 2-0 victory over MIBR with Zekken taking the MVP of the series grabbing himself 40 kills across the two maps.

It was just smooth sailing for the Masters Madrid winners only allowing the Brazilian side to get 10 rounds across the two maps with Lotus going 13-3 in favour of Sentinels and then Bind going 13-7 the way of Sentinels with a 9-3 first half.

Stats Courtesy of vlr.gg

Coming off of a loss against Leviatan, where aspas dropped 68 kills across the two maps, Sentinels needed to get back to Championship form which they proved that they will and did against this poor MIBR side. Their new Bind comp switching TenZ off of Yoru and onto the Gekko has proved to be something that has worked incredibly in their favour with Zekkens, Raze being one of the best in the world, that alone is enough firepower to send Sentinels ahead of the competition.

Sentinels now look ahead to Evil Geniuses on Tuesday where they will hope to go 3-1 in games in the regular season and make it to the playoffs from the alpha group despite KRU going 3-0 at the moment.

Sentinels did look slightly different in their playstyle in that TenZ picked up the Outlaw and the Operator much more often allowing him to take long range fights and win them out much more comfortably despite how good his rifling has been this season.

He recently said on stream –

”Other than aspas, America doesnt really have a good AWPer”

He then proceeds to pick up the AWP and take as many fights as he could with it, one being a clutch on Bind whilst AWPing on Gekko. First made popular by EDG’s ZMjjKK.

Aspas Obliterates Sentinels With 47 Kills on Lotus

Week 2 of VCT Americas kicked off on Friday with the first game between 100T vs G2 and then the game that was on everyones minds, SEN vs LEV and it did not disappoint with a 2-0 victory to LEV taking down the Masters Madrid winners.

Despite it being a 2-0, the first map on Lotus, was 19-17 with Aspas breaking the kill record in VCT by dropping 47 kills on the Raze. He has put his name in the record books once again with his outstanding performance against the most in form team in the world. With this performance he beats out ZETA Dep’s record of 42 by 5 kills and he does it in a game where he had to perform to the best of his abilities to win the game.

The game came off the back of SEN beating 100T 2-0 and LEV losing to Cloud9 2-1 with the momentum going the favour of Sentinels. Despite this, it was a rare off-day for Zekken who normally tops the server with kills and it was aspas who stole the show going +34 in the two maps.

With aspas’ 47 kill map on Lotus, they went into Icebox hoping to take the game 2-0 and that is what they did. With Sentinels being known that their ‘jett‘ maps aren’t their strongest as Zekkens, Raze is top 3 in the world however his Jett has some work to do. With Icebox being a Jett map, Sentinels eventually ended up losing the map 13-11 leaving their first loss of VCT Americas Stage 1 starting against Leviatan who have got their first win against Sentinels.

It should also be noted that aspas’s 47 kill map on Lotus had more kills than ANY other player in the server across the two maps. kiNgg on LEV came close with 46 and Zekken with 41 but aspas dropping more on just one map tells the story on how impressive he was in this series and even in the series against Cloud9 he topped the server despite losing the game.

SEN go onto to face off against MIBR on Saturday 20th April at 10pm BST, with MIBR losing their opening game against KRU 2-0 where Sentinels will hope to get a win back and go on to gain their points for Masters Shanghai. Whereas Leviatan will go on to face the inform NRG who are coming off the back of a 2-0 win over FURIA.

Sentinels Take Down 100 Thieves in First Match of VCT Americas

The Masters Madrid Champions return back to VCT Americas to play their first game of Split 1 against their long term rivals, 100 Thieves in a game that they took by storm and dominated showing despite their lack of practice, they are still on the top of VCT.

There were questions on whether or not their IGL, johnqt, could make it back from Morocco in time for the game as he, alongside the LOUD guys, was dealing with heavy visa issues stopping him from getting into the USA to play against 100 Thieves. However, he did make it and played very well despite only getting into the country 24 hours earlier. He dropped 30 frags across the two maps which left him 4th in the lobby.

After a start that looked like 100 Thieves were competitive and were looking to disrupt the flow of the reining champions, Sacy just shifted into a different gear with the Brazilian dropping 22 kills and a crucial 4k in the final round of the map to take Icebox 13-10 and set up for Split which they are known for being the best worldwide at.

They took Split comfortably 13-6 leaving 100T fans wondering why Zikz didnt ban Split from SEN’s hands since their final map, if 100T were to beat SEN on Split, wouldve been Sunset. Sunset is a map that is played so well by Sentinels that some fans call the map SENset because of their prowess on the map.

Sentinels start off their year with confidence only losing 3 matches all year, 1 of them being a useless match against G2 in the lower brackets, and the other two against LOUD and GenG. They start off stage 1 looking confident ahead of their battle against Leviatan and Aspas who dropped 78 kills in a 3 map series against Cloud9.

100 Thieves, however, are off to a poor start with Boostio only dropping 10 kills across the two maps and some poor decisions individually from the players. They go on to face G2 who are looking strong with their new addition of Icy in their 2-0 victory over Evil Geniuses.

NRG Crush LOUD 2-0 In Redemption Game Back in Form

After bowing out of VCT Kick-off, NRG with their superteam had to come back and make a statement out of their first opponents of the VCT Americas stage 1. Their first opponent ended up being LOUD, their cores long term rivals with the OPTIC and NRG core facing off against LOUD for years.

However, they came into this years game with a different roster and outlook with their primary caller, FNS, being replaced by Ethan, and their fire power, yay, being replaced by the best player of 2023, Demon1. This roster got eliminated in Kick-off by the eventual Masters Madrid winners, Sentinels and were quite underwhelming despite the potential that this team has on paper.

They came into the game with LOUD only getting days to practice after having several visa issues leaving all of their Brazilian players stuck in Ireland with Saadhak the only player in LA meaning that they definitely were not to their full potential as a roster and it showed with an abysmal showing on Sunset despite Less’ monster performance on Breeze.

There was also a debut of new comps for NRG with the new meta being Yoru/ Raze being used by teams across the world, they implemented this into their game and put Ethan on Yoru for Breeze and Demon1 debuted his Raze for the first time ever, topping the lobby in kills.

To become a top duelist this year, you HAVE to be able to play Raze at a high level shown by top duelists from Masters Madrid such as Zekken, t3xture and f0rsaken. Demon1 is still improving and despite his Raze utility not being up to the level of Zekken or Jinggg, his aim makes up for his lack of experience with him just clicking heads effortlessly.

Their next game is against FURIA on the 14th of April where they will look to become a 2-0 side in VCT Americas and show that they mean business this year.