Tag: video-games

Paper Rex Knock Out Karmine Corp From Masters Madrid in MEGA Match

One of the surprise teams of VCT 2024, Karmine Corp, have been eliminated from Masters Madrid by the APAC international kings, Paper Rex in a 2-1 banger of a match.

It took the team 3 maps and a nail biting over time on the final map to secure the winner and send home the French side from Masters Madrid after their dream run in the playoffs.

The game ended with the so called ‘flex god‘ f0rsaken returning as Raze but also playing 3 different roles across the 3 maps to pretty much secure his team the win and bring them over the line in the final map with a ridiculous 3k to send Karmine Corp back to EMEA.

Monyet quietened the haters with his performance on Bind sending them in the right direction with a round 4 Ace putting the hopes of Paper Rex fans high despite the criticism he received after the previous game against Team Heretics.

Despite the seriousness of the tournament and the pressure that they are under, Paper Rex played their usual style and seemed to be having fun which is what the essence of Paper Rex is. They will always be smiling and laughing whilst destroying some of the best teams in the world.

They will go on to face GenG in the play-offs for a chance to finally win an international event after coming 2-3rd place so many times now that it is just a given that Paper Rex will go far in the tournament and reach at least the Upper Finals.

LOUD Obliterate EDG To Make Top Four At Masters Madrid

The Brazilian kings, LOUD, had a statement game with a complete domination of Edward Gaming only allowing them 5 total rounds across the two maps in this crucial knockout game at Masters Madrid.

LOUD once again brought the pheonix comp to Sunset with quick going 38-19 across the two maps showing fans that even without aspas, LOUD are a force to be reckoned with especially on their Sunset where quick went 24-7 on the Phoenix after a complete blowout on Icebox.

Unfortunate as it is, Zmjjkk wasnt enough to bring down the LAN Veterans in LOUD as they dominate Icebox 13-2 with the Chinese superstar going 4-15 and then ending Sunset 13-14 despite having quite a strong run of form coming into this game.

LOUD solidified their spot in the play-offs for the Grand Final with an utter domination of the Chinese side sending a message to their next opponent, Sentinels, that they are a force that wont go down easily despite losing their best player to Leviatan.

The draw for the play-offs was done after the two knockout games ended, with the two regions fighting within each other allowing for an upper bracket game and a lower bracket game to be NA vs APAC.

LOUD will play Sentinels on the 21st of March at 6pm after the Paper Rex vs GenG game concludes setting up for a huge match that went 3-2 in the way of Sentinels the last time that they met.

GenG Join Sentinels In Play-Offs With 2-1 Victory Over Edward Gaming

The second team to make it to the play-offs for Masters Madrid has been confirmed as GenG defeat Edward Gaming in convincing fashion after dominating 2 maps.

Despite the incredible performance from Zmjjkk on the EDG side, it seemed to be just Kang Kang who was turning up for the game and wanted to win. They get sent down to the 1-1 bracket in the Swiss System where they will go on to play LOUD, who they lost to 2-1 in last years Champions.

Edward Gaming took the first map on Icebox 13-8 with an unfortunate time for Lakia on the Gekko going 3-18 which ultimately led to Edward taking the map quite comfortably despite then going on to getting a combined 11 rounds across the next two maps.

Once again, Zmjjkk putting up ridiculous numbers which puts him currently in the top 5 performing players of the entire masters so far. Despite losing the game, they are still in the tournament where they will battle to try and make it to the play offs to possibly rematch GenG and try and make history for the Chinese VALORANT scene.

GenG go on to the play-offs joining Sentinels where they will wait 3 days for their matches but they will find out the remaining two teams and see who will join them in getting closer to the Masters Madrid title.

Sentinels Take Down Team Heretics and Karmine Corp To Make Play-Offs At Masters Madrid

Sentinels dominate Americas and now they have dominated EMEA by taking down both EMEA teams at Masters Madrid.

They become the first team at the event to make it to play-offs after back to back wins going 2-1 against heretics and 2-0 against Karmine Corp.

It has been a long wait to see TenZ and Sentinels on the Masters stage but the wait has been well worth it. In the first round of his International return, he hit a huge Ace to send the motivation in the way of the Sentinels lads.

They went on to win the game 2-1 and beat the EMEA second seed and were sent to face off against the other side from Europe, Karmine Corp who were looking like tournament favourites coming into this Masters.

However TenZ really showed up when his team needed him the most, reminiscent to his Masters Reykjavik. He then ends the Karmine Corp game, a crucial play off game, with 42 kills on omen going +21 on his K/D which set Sentinels up for success and go on to beat the French giants to make it to play offs.

It is only the second team that Sentinels have beat 2-0 since MIBR of the play-ins. All of the other teams that they have faced have gone the distance including a 3-2 victory over LOUD in the Americas Kick-Off grand final.

The next game for Sentinels is yet to be drawn but they send Karmine Corp down to the 1-1 in the Swiss stage to face off against another team who will win or lose their next game.

Double UPSET As FNATIC and NAVI Eliminated From Kick-Off

An incredible day of games in EMEA saw the best team of 2023, FNATIC, and the old Masters winning side, NAVI, both get 2-0’d and lose their positions in Masters Madrid.

Karmine Corp and Team Heretics make it all the way and qualify for masters Madrid overcoming huge obstacles in their way and defying all the odds.

Team Heretics take down NaVI in a very close matchup between the two giants with an overtime win on sunset and a run through on Breeze leaving fans shocked as the once great, FPX, have been defeated by a very young squad with 4 of the players under the age of 20.

KC then obliterated FNATIC off the face of VCT with a commanding 2-0 victory not allowing FNATIC to reach double digit rounds in either game. After clear favourites to make it all the way to masters and possibly even win it, FNATIC lose only their second game of VCT this year in dramatic fashion.

The team that was almost unstoppable last year winning 2 out of the 3 LAN events, have fallen at the first hurdle of 2024. KC have shown the VCT world that they aren’t an unbreakable wall, they are a team to be knocked down a step.

After these huge upsets, fans turn their attention towards VCT Americas with SEN vs NRG and LOUD vs EG set to play on the weekend with fans hoping for another upset with Sentinels making it to their first LAN in 2 years and even Evil Geniuses showing fans they aren’t a shell of their former selves.

Sentinels Knock 100Thieves OUT Of Kick-Off Defeating Them 2-1

The most clouted game in Valorant happened once again early this morning with Sentinels facing off against 100 Thieves in an elimination match from the VCT Americas kickoff tournament.

Sentinels took the win in a close game that gave fans more hope in Sentinels making it to play offs after their next game.

The match came about after both teams lost their opening games. Sentinels lost 2-0 to LOUD with 100 Thieves losing 2-1 to the revamped Leviatan. They both came into this matchup needing to win and put everything on the line.

After their confusing performance against LOUD, fans were wondering where all the skill and domination went from their pre season games. However this game quietened the doubters with Sentinels playing as they should.

TenZ, also played his patterned version of Yoru on Bind which they ended up losing 13-5 despite TenZ topping the leaderboard for SEN. He then moved back onto his omen which has become his main agent this season which rumours of an Astra being played but nothing shown yet.

100 Theives now have NO chance to make it to masters Madrid and have to wait over a month for their next official VCT game after losing both of their opening games in the group of death.

Sentinels will go on to face the loser of LOUD vs Levtiatan for a place in the playoffs to make it to Madrid in March.

G2 Esports Defeat KRÜ Esports 2-1 With Incredible Comeback Performance

Group C kicked off last night with the final game of the first game of the group stages, G2 Esports vs KRÜ Esports to see who will face off in the upper bracket against the current world champions, Evil Geniuses.

After all the first games in each groups finalised, it was time for group C to take the stage with the 0-9 team from last year facing off against the Ascension winners. With both teams having made transfers in the off season, it was set out to be a very different game than what it would have been last season.

G2, formally The Guard, lost their star duelist player, Tex, to Leviatan but they replaced him with the duelist of Cloud9, leaf. KRU set out last year to make a brand new roster after going 0-9 in the regular season making three changes but keeping hold of their star duelist player, Keznit.

The game started with a 13-9 win on icebox for KRU with a KAY/0 Viper comp rather than a Sova Viper comp which G2 ran. The rest of the games were comfortably won by G2 taking Sunset 13-9 and then taking the decider map Ascent 13-11.

Keznit dropped 31 kills on Ascent but it wasnt enough for the LATAM side to start off their season differently to last year.

G2 go on to face off against Evil Geniuses in the Upper bracket on the 24th of February with KRU set to face off against the loser of that game to qualify for the play-offs in Kick-Off.

LOUD Drop Sentinels To Lower Bracket In 2-0 Fashion

After all of the hype around this new squad, they once again failed to deliver the goods and live up to the hype that they bring towards the squad by losing 2-0 to a new LOUD side.

LOUD lost their star player aspas to his new side Leviatan in the off-season and replaced him with well known Brazilian talent, qck, who delivered a star studded performance on the Raze and the Pheonix despite playing smokes all last season on FURIA.

Sentinels dropped 2 maps with their new roster being their first loss with the current roster without pANcada and with Zellsis which caused commotion from fans with questions on this, despite losing this game, they still have the possibility for the future to bring back pANcada into the squad and have his raw talent and aim back into the side.

LOUD move on through to the upper bracket to face off against the winner of LEV vs 100T and Sentinels will move onto the lower bracket to face off against the loser of the game which is expected to be yet another 100T vs Sentinels face off that has become famous across the VCT in Americas.

The lower bracket gives Sentinels a cushion of some sort to still make it to play offs through kick-off and try and become one of the two teams to make it to Masters Madrid.

What To Expect From The First Game Of VCT 2024 And What To Expect From NRG

It’s no secret that NRG are favourites to make it to Masters Madrid out of the Americas League in spot 1 or spot 2 and due to their performance last year, they managed to avoid the group of death.

However, they did end up in group A alongside Cloud9, FURIA and MIBR who, in their respective ways, are mega teams as well.

The matchup between NRG and FURIA will be the first match of VCT in 2024 globally with the most popular league, The Americas, kicking off with the roster everyone is most hyped about.

After acquiring Demon1 and Ethan from Evil Geniuses, NRG formed a super team to try and gain the success that they were so close to achieving last season. With the addition of Marved from Sentinels, they look to be, on paper, the best team in the world.

However, fans aren’t quite convinced for good reasons since other teams in the league have played off season tournaments to showcase the skill and talent that they have. Most notably, Sentinels winning AfreecaTV against teams like Team Liquid, EDG, DRX and Paper Rex in December 2023.

NRG have yet to show anything even from scrims on how good they are and fans are going off of paper on how dominant NRG can be. The first VCT match of the year will be the first time anyone has seen this roster perform and criticism is coming from fans for Ethan’s first time IGL situation.

With NRG housing 5 powerhouses, the common conception of the match is going to be a 2-0 victory to the NA squad. However, don’t be too closed off to an upset with NRG going down to losers bracket since it is all unknown for this team. Going off of paper won’t always end with the correct result.

Zellsis Fires Back At Fans After Backlash Over Replacing pANcada

Sentinels star Zellsis has been receiving backlash over taking a spot in the starting roster for Sentinels and putting World Champion pANcada to the bench for the foreseeable future.

Despite never publicly announcing it, the current perception is that Zellsis has been moved from the bench to the starting roster as their flex player as pANcada, most known from his MVP performance at Champions 2022 on smokes.

Zellsis has received backlash from Brazilian fans and just Valorant fans in general for this with some fans saying how his this ‘vibe merchant’ taken the place of a world champion. However, it seems that Zellsis is playing more of a flex role and TenZ, who is well known for his Jett, has moved to the primary smokes role announcing in recent interviews and streams that he will be running Omen and possibly Astra this year.

In a somewhat ‘impression farming’ tweet, he states that he is starting for Sentinels in the upcoming Kick-Off tournament over pANcada which was then backed up by the Brazilian saying he currently has visa issues and is in Brazil whilst the rest of the team is in America scrimming and practicing for the tournament kicking off in just 5 days.

He then seemed to retract the statement by saying the tweet above, however fans have known for a while that Zellsis will be starting on the flex role and TenZ will be starting on the Smokes.

Despite this, fans of Sentinels will know by now that TenZ isn’t shy to admit he gets ill/ sick a lot. And with him running Smokes this year, pANcada will be more likely to get back into the starting team if he becomes ill because he is a world class smoker player with his Champions title under his belt.

Their first game is against LOUD on Saturday at 10pm UK time with the expected lineup to be –

Duelist – Zekken

Initiator – Sacy

Sentinel – JohnQT (IGL)

Flex – Zellsis

Controller – TenZ

They will fight for a spot in the play offs to gain a place at Masters Madrid later this year.