VCT EMEA Challengers Week 4 Recap
While the North American region is almost done with the Challengers 1 group stage, the EMEA region is slightly behind. The main reason for this delay was the fact Riot Games decided to postpone week 3 due to the current war in Ukraine. The matches finally continued in week 4, where we saw three interesting matchups.
The two Turkish teams, BBL Esports and SuperMassive Blaze, faced off first on March 5th. In a surprise twist, BBL was victorious. That same day, G2 Esports and Acend fought for the third spot in Group B. Acend managed to win, but not without losing a single map on Bind.
And finally, the third and final match was played a day later, on March 6th, where Team Liquid quickly dismantled LDN UTD and secured the second spot in Group A.
G2 vs. Acend
This was by far the most interesting match of week 4. Both teams had something to prove here. G2 Esports brought back Mixwell and wanted to put this new roster to the test, while Acend wanted to regain their momentum after the loss they suffered to Guild Esports one week prior.
First of all, G2 winning on Bind was a massive surprise. Acend are usually the kings of Bind, so to have them lose on a map they’re so confident in was highly unusual. It gave the G2 fans some hope in this new roster. All in all, they had some great moments and really put on quite a show, especially nukkye, who was an absolute beast in this match.
However, Acend did win in the end. They’re not the world champions for no reason. Despite losing Bind, they quickly recovered and took both Ascent and Split. CNed, as usual, was the top player on his Jett, with the best K/D/A ratio and the highest ACS score.
Team Liquid vs. LDN UTD
This was a relatively easy match for Team Liquid, but an important one nonetheless. This win bumped them up to second place in group A, just behind FunPlus Phoenix.
The main takeaway from this match was the fact that ScreaM is an absolute monster of a carry. Even if there were moments where LDN UTD felt confident, ScreaM was always there to pull off some crazy play and shatter that confidence into pieces.
ScreaM wasn’t really in his element on Skye, even though he did perform well, but his match with Sage was a completely different story. Despite playing a more support-oriented agent, ScreaM went on a rampage and carried the match on Split.
What Happens Next?
Week 5 is scheduled to begin on March 11th. This was originally supposed to be the final week of EMEA Challengers, but the delays messed the schedule up a bit. For this reason, Riot Games will have an extra set of matches after week 5. There’s a total of nine extra matchups that still don’t have a set date. These will probably be revealed once week 5 concludes.
Aside from that, everything else is going according to the original plan by Riot Games. We’ll see which teams will end up in the Playoffs, and which ones will advance to the VCT 2022: EMEA Challengers Promotion. This is a new Valorant Champions Tour tournament in 2022 where the bottom group teams from each region get to compete for a chance to qualify for Challengers 2 directly.
All in all, things have been quite interesting in VCT EMEA. We can’t wait to see what will happen in week 5 and whether there will be any significant changes in the current group standings.
