Day 6 was the best of Champions so far. Three matches, three upset victories.
Let’s get into it.
VALORANT Champions Day 6
Sentinels are going home.
The best team in North America throughout the first year of the VALORANT Champions Tour 2021 has been eliminated from the group stage of the year’s biggest tournament. KRÜ Esports came out on top of Sentinels, who were a contender to lift the trophy. The plucky team from Latin America were massive underdogs coming into the third series of the day and now they’re heading into playoffs with the second seed from their group.
Map 1 of the series between KRÜ and Sentinels was the newest addition to the pool, Fracture. Sentinels looked dominant and took the game 13-7. The next two maps of Haven and Split both started with an 8-4 lead for the NA team at the half. Sentinels couldn’t hold their leads, and KRÜ put together two consecutive comebacks to win 13-11 on both maps. Split, in particular, will enter the annals of VALORANT’s fledgling history as one of the best maps of the entire year.
With the magnitude of the upset in match three of Day 6, the first two series are almost overshadowed, but both still delivered. The first match saw Acend against Envy. The NA team in Envy were slightly favored over the Europe, Middle East and Africa team in Acend. Envy were the finalists at VCT Masters 3 Berlin and Acend had already lost — sort of — to Vivo Keyd. Acend came out swinging and took both Ascent and Bind to win in 2-0 fashion. Envy are not out, but they will have to beat X10 CRIT on Dec. 7 to reach playoffs.
The second match was the aforementioned X10 CRIT against Vivo Keyd. Again, the result was an upset with X10 CRIT coming out on top of the Brazilian squad in a 2-0 stomp. The Vivo Keyd that beat Acend — sort of — was nowhere to be seen. The Thai team looked confident and their aggressive plays were rarely punished. They won Icebox 13-6 and Haven 13-5, eliminating Vivo Keyd from Champions. X10 CRIT advance to play Envy for playoffs.
Day 6 MVP
Honorable mentions go to Acend’s Aleksander “zeek” Zygmunt and X10’s Panyawat “Sushiboys” Subsiriroj, but the MVP of Day 6 belongs to Angelo “keznit” Mori. Despite an underperformance on Map 2, Bind, keznit dominated Split and propelled his team over the edge with his Raze on the attack side. His final stats for the series were 52 kills on 222 average combat score.
In terms of statistics, keznit was actually outperformed in many regards by his teammate Roberto “Mazino” Rivas, another serious contender for the day’s MVP. It was only keznit’s impact kills on Split that set him slightly above Mazino. It was very much a team effort from KRÜ as every player stepped up and delivered.
Day 6 play of the day
The play of the day belongs to Sentinels’s Hunter “SicK” Mims. SicK’s 1v3 clutch on Haven didn’t amount to a map win but damn if it wasn’t… sick.
Playoffs draw
The final highlight from a Day 6 packed with highlights was the playoffs draw, where the second seeds from each group were randomly drawn to go against the first seeds in the quarterfinals of the playoffs.
Although only five of eight teams have lock in their playoffs spot, the draw means that there are only so many quarterfinals possibilities. The result of Day 7, Dec. 7, will dictate the final matchup. The possibilities are:
- Acend vs. Vikings/Team Secret
- Team Liquid vs. Vision Strikers/Cloud9
- Gambit Esports vs. Envy/X10 CRIT
- Fnatic vs. KRÜ Esports
Only one quarterfinal is set in stone and that’s Fnatic vs. KRÜ. There will be no Fnatic vs. Sentinels rematch from the grand final of Masters Reykjavík. Instead, we’ve got KRÜ, a team that has attended every single international LAN in VALORANT.
The other noteworthy potential matchup is Gambit Esports vs. Envy, the grand final rematch from Masters Berlin. This quarter final is conditional on Envy beating X10. The only other potential EMEA vs. NA grudge match would be Liquid vs. Cloud9 — again, conditional on Cloud9 beating Vision Strikers.
Everything rides on the results of Day 7, the final day of the Champions group stage.
Published: Dec 6, 2021 06:45 pm