Esports
VCT 2021: Stage 2 Masters is the biggest Valorant tournament to date. Here's all you need to know before the action starts next week in Iceland.
More than 2,000 elite Valorant teams from around the world tried to qualify for Stage 2 Masters and now just 10 remain. VCT 2021 is Riot’s new professional format for its tactical multiplayer shooter, similar to its pro League of Legends competition; teams will first play regional qualifiers before moving to two big international tournaments.
Stage 2 Masters Reykjavík will be the first Riot-organised international tournament for Valorant. Comparable to League of Legends’ Mid-Season Invitational, teams from North America, EMEA, Korea, Brazil, LATAM, Japan and Southeast Asia will compete for VCT Circuit points and a cut of a massive prize pool – the first placed team will win US$200,000. How does it all work, who’s competing and where can you watch? Allow us to explain.
The format
The 10 teams have been seeded into a double knock-out bracket, with NA (Version1) and EMEA’s (Fnatic) second seed starting versus Japan (Crazy Raccoon) and LATAM’s (KRÜ Esports) seed. NA and EMEA both got an extra seed because those regions have the largest player base. All matches will be best of three maps, except the Grand Final which is played in a best-of-five format. To qualify, teams had to play through their region’s challenger series, an open qualifier tournament.
The teams
Since Valorant is still a new game with not a lot of tournament history, it’s hard to say who will be the favourite to win it all going into Stage 2. However, we know that qualifying was incredibly difficult, with every Valorant team in the world wanting to go. The biggest standout performers from North America are arguably Sentinels, who already have multiple big tournament wins under their belt including Pop Flash, JBL Quantum Cup and PAX Arena Invitational. Sentinels have also loaned star player Tyson ‘TenZ’ Ngo from Cloud9 Blue. The rest of the Sentinels squad have been playing with each other for more than a year, which is a long time for a scene where teams are still looking to optimise their rosters.
From Europe, both Team Liquid and Fnatic have qualified. Team Liquid have the higher seed and the more experienced roster, but neither team have enough results to compare them to the squads from other regions. However, with shooters being incredibly popular in Europe and both teams beating giants like FunPlus Phoenix – who have been competing in the professional Valorant since August of last year – they will definitely want to show the strength of the European Valorant scene on home soil.
After Europe and North America, Brazil is the expected third strongest region in Valorant. An extremely strong showing in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive makes many analysts think that Valorant is the perfect game for Brazil to perform on. However, the players from Team Vikings don’t have the background that you’d expect; Leandro ‘frz’ Gomes and Gustavo ‘Sacy’ Rossi are both former Paladins players. Brazil has yet to host any major Valorant tournaments, so it will be great to see if their representative teams will perform as well as is expected of them.
The South Korean team NUTURN Gaming are unquestionably the dark horses of the tournament, coming out ahead of the Vision Strikers, a team that have dominated Asia since the release of the game last year with a win streak of 106-0 that only ended in April. Yet, NUTURN gaming won 3-0 against DWG KIA, a well-established South Korean esports organisation. Was NUTURN’s victory a fluke or can we expect great things from the Korean representatives?
While most of the European and North American professionals have a gaming background in Counter-Strike, across the globe in Asia we see that most players come from different games. Most of Crazy Raccoon’s roster have played high-level Fortnite, PUBG, Overwatch and Alliance of Valiant Arms. A big question on our minds is if these players will approach Valorant differently than the ex-CS pros.
Venue
The games will be played in Reykjavík, Iceland at the Laugardalshöll. Fans that have watched the League of Legends MSI games will be familiar with the venue, however, we won’t know yet if Riot have decided to use a different decor for both tournaments.
Talent
The great thing about Valorant is that it brings casters and talent from all over the esports industry together into this new game. The analyst desk will be hosted by Alex ‘GoldenBoy’ Mendez, most known for games like Call of Duty, Halo and Overwatch. The onsite host will be James ‘Dash’ Patterson, host of the LCS.
The games will be shout casted and analysed by casters and analysts from all over the world:
Streams
Scheduling
The first best of three games will be played on May 24 and the tournament will last for a week until May 30. Make sure to stay tuned for more news and updates.