The first-ever international VALORANT offline event kicked off on Monday in Reykjavik, Iceland, and some teams had better results than others on Day 1 of VCT Masters 2. North American representative Version1 took an expected victory against Japan’s Crazy Raccoons, but Version1 captain Anthony “vanity” Malaspina acknowledged nerves somewhat got to them in a closer-than-expected matchup.
“I think the opening matches of the tournament are always going to be one of the more difficult matches,” vanity said. “Obviously, this is everyone’s first LAN competition in VALORANT. I guess some of the regions have played online before, but it is not like LAN servers.”
Coming into the tournament as North America’s second seed, Version1 ran into mishaps before even getting to Iceland due to a visa issue preventing Maxim “wippie” Shepelev from attending the event. However, they managed to recruit Jamal “jammyz” Bangash as a stand-in, who had a respectable debut onstage against Crazy Raccoons.
After a 2-0 victory over Crazy Raccoons, vanity broke down what Version1 need to do in order to progress even further into the tournament and why he thinks North America’s No. 1 seed, Sentinels, are the favorites at VCT Masters 2 ahead of Team Liquid.
“I think Liquid’s a really talented team, but I don’t understand the notion that they’re the best team at the tournament,” vanity said. “I was reading some power rankings (Editor’s note: This was most likely Upcomer’s VCT Masters 2 power rankings) today, and they were above Sentinels. Not to discredit them at all – they’re a great team, don’t get me wrong – but they’ve had two, three good months, whereas Sentinels have been good consistently throughout the entire duration of the game.”
Shots fired, huh? We’ll see soon enough: Version1 face Team Liquid at 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
