The smoke has settled and two teams remain in the VALORANT First Strike North American qualifier.
Team Envy and Cloud9 Blue face off in tomorrow’s grand finals, with the victor earning top seed in next week’s closed Nerd Street Gamers qualifier.
Envy’s new roster is making its first professional appearance since acquiring former T1 pros Victor “food” Wong and Austin “crashies” Roberts—and they haven’t missed a beat. The team comfortably moved through the bracket, taking out Complexity and T1. And Anthony “mummAy” DiPaolo had a field day in today’s one-sided victory against Gen.G, leading the team with 44 frags over two maps (food came in second with 30 kills).
The squad managed to get second place in the Pop Flash Ignition Series with their previous team, but ultimately fell to Sentinels. But with the first-seed Sentinels eliminated by Gen.G in yesterday’s quarterfinals, only C9 stands in their way.
C9’s victory over TSM was a bit more neck-to-neck. C9 won Ascent handily, with Skyler “Relyks” Weaver landing a beautiful ace to clutch the eighth round. But Bind was far closer, with both teams going back and forth well into overtime. Ultimately, TSM would win the match on Matthew “WARDELL” Yu’s back, 16-14.
In one impressive play, the star Oper lined up C9 players one-by-one for a clean four K.
Despite a great effort, TSM would suffer a disappointing loss on the third map. C9 absolutely dominated the first half, but TSM was mounting an impressive comeback until they eventually lost, 13-11.
Envy and C9’s grand finals match kicks off tomorrow at 4pm CT.
