VCT Stage 1 - Challengers EMEA Week 1: Wins for Fnatic, Acend, and Gambit

Feb 15, 2022

If the Qualifier action wasn’t enough and the upsets aplenty, we’ve already seen titans like G2 and Team Liquid felled over the past few days, while VCT Champions 2021, Acend, continue their dominance in excellent form.

If you missed out on the action, don’t worry! Here’s our rundown of all of the action from VCT Stage 1 - Challengers EMEA, Week 1.

Group A: Gambit reassert dominance over Team Liquid

One of Week 1’s most hyped matchups was the faceoff between Gambit and Team Liquid, two storied orgs whose Masters-born rivalry continues to intensify. Despite a close fought series, the Russian org took down one of Europe’s finest in a series that took us from Breeze to Icebox, adding further fuel to this simmering battle of wits.

From here, a solid fire game from BIG spiralled into defeat against FPX, who reverse swept the squad across Haven and Split courtesy of game changing plays by Latvian superstar and Initiator extraordinaire, Ardis ‘ardiis’ Svarenieks.

Group A was rounded out with yet another Russian team asserting their dominance; this time in the form of NAVI. Taking down Europe’s final qualifiers and the org that knocked EXCEL out of the running, LDN UTD, it was a great showing from CIS.

Group B: A tale as old as time

While Group A began with a relatively recent rivalry, Group B saw two of esports’ most seasoned veterans square up on Future Earth: G2 Esports and Fnatic. In a back and forth series characterised by a series of insane play by relative newcomer Andrey ‘BraveAF’ Gorchakov, his Sova and Sage proved lethal on the battlefield.

From here, Acend took to the VCT stage once more, this time up against Turkish squad SuperMassive Blaze. While first map Ascent tested the reigning Champions’ mettle, a one-sided match on Bind closed the series out 2-0 for Acend.

Tragedy struck once more for EMEA’s Turkish representatives, as Week 1 came to an end with BBL versus Guild Esports, where the UK squad put up a pretty dominant performance on Breeze and Haven.

VCT Challengers Stage 1 Week 1: Results

While the VCT Challengers story is far from over, here are the current standings for each of the two groups:

Group A

Team	Result
FunPlus Phoenix	1-0
Gambit	1-0
Natus Vincere	1-0
BIG	0-1
LND UTD	0-1
Team Liquid	0-1

Group B

Team	Result
Acend	1-0
Fnatic	1-0
Guild Esports	1-0
BBL Esports	0-1
G2 Esports	0-1
SuperMassive Blaze	0-1

Game Changers Stage 1: Vods

If you missed out on any of the action, you can check out vods of the event on https://valorantesports.com/vo...!