Following an extremely competitive first day of the 2022 VALORANT Champions tournament, Leviatán and Paper Rex were prepared to go head-to-head today to see who the first team to make it out of the group stage would be.
Though the Singaporean VALORANT team Paper Rex have more experience on the international stage, Latin America’s Leviatán have impressed by making massive improvements in the last few months to rise to the top of their region and continue to upset internationally.
And today, Leviatán continued to improve even more on their gameplay from yesterday, where they beat EMEA’s Team Liquid, taking down PRX 2-0 in convincing fashion.
PRX did learn from Liquid’s mistake yesterday and took out Ascent, a map that Leviatán proved is one of their best. Hoping to avoid Tacolilla having another stellar performance, PRX banned the map without hesitation.
The teams started off on Haven, Leviatán’s map pick that has also proven to be their home ground. After their debut at Champions yesterday against Liquid, it’s clear the LATAM team has refined their strategies since Masters Copenhagen. They started off the map strong and cheers rang out from the team across the stage.
PRX were able to stabilize after a scary start to the map and the first half ended even at 6-6. Leviatán continued their streak of collecting wins in pistol rounds in the second half, however, and never lost their momentum. Leviatán took Haven 13-8.
PRX looked forward to their map pick of Bind, a map that Leviatán has bad memories of after facing Fnatic in the longest overtime of Masters Copenhagen in July.
PRX opted to put their duelist player, f0rsakeN, on Yoru, a pick the team has become known for. And with this pick, they completed the entire roster of agents at this year’s Champions. It’s only day two and every agent has already been played at least once.
In a surprise twist, Leviatán’s star Chamber player Tacolilla locked in Skye. Obviously going for a different approach from the last time they played Bind, the team composition pointed to an aggressive strategy. Leviatán started off the map by taking closer fights to capitalize on this compositional change, but PRX matched their every move.
Bind was as close as it possibly could have been, and just when it looked like PRX may have gotten a lead, some big mistakes in round 21 kept Leviatán in the game. They cruised through the next three rounds and took Bind 13-11, with no overtime in sight.
The best player on Leviatán today was Shyy. Though Tacolilla is usually their big star, the squad showed even more development as a roster by pulling together their whole team to step up. The team celebrated jubilantly on stage after their win, upsetting many people’s bracket predictions by cruising through Group A with ease.
Leviatán become the first team at VCT Champions to make it out of the group stage. The team will now get several days of rest in Istanbul before beginning the playoff stage of the tournament.
