This isn’t the first time that the North American representatives started an event this way. OpTic once again lost their opening match at an international VALORANT tournament, losing to EMEA’s Guild Esports in a 2-0 fashion today in their first group stage match at VCT Masters Copenhagen. North American fans aren’t feeling great about this as this OpTic roster now has a 0-7 map record against EMEA teams.
Both teams made very surprising picks, that’s how this series started. Guild selected Icebox while OpTic chose Split. Guild jumped out to an early lead, with OpTic struggling to hit shots and hold off Guild’s attack-side execution and map control. Guild notched seven straight rounds to start the map, but a crashies clutch jump-started an OpTic resurgence, getting an 8-4 Guild lead at the first half.
Europe’s 3rd best team continued to build momentum after an impressive pistol round on defense and Guild kept punishing yay in opening duels. Guild built an 11-4 lead before back-to-back triples from Marved began to fuel an OpTic comeback. Yay and FNS produced multi-kills of their own to reduce the Guild lead to 11-9, but a fast Guild retake on A and a monumental hold from Sayf in the 24th round finally pushed Guild over the finish line on Icebox, 13-11.
Guild continued to own OpTic after moving to Split, punishing the reigning champ’s attack side over and over and keeping their economy in shambles. Yay was held scoreless as Guild jumped out to a 7-0 lead, and just like on Icebox, it was a clutch from crashies that finally put OpTic on the board. Again like in the first map, OpTic began to string rounds together thanks to some big plays from Marved, leading to another 8-4 halftime lead for Guild.
OpTic woke up on the defensive side of their map pick, even winning a bonus round with all of Guild still alive by denying the plant before time ran out. OpTic quickly reduced the 8-4 lead to an 8-8 tie, and the two sides traded rounds en route to an 11-11 tie. Guild cleared out the B site defense with flawless execution, but OpTic miraculously won a two-vs-four retake spearheaded by crashies. Guild responded with a fast mid/B split, though, and shut down the retake to force overtime.
Guild started OT on defense, and Russ and Leo won the necessary opening duels in mid to take an early advantage after a flawless round. A quick opening double from Trexx should have secured Guild the win, but FNS delivered a high-pressure, series-saving 4K to tie the map again. OpTic opened up the B site on attack to take their first lead of the series, but this time, Trexx delivered the 4K to keep his team on the map. Russ shut down a late rotate to B to give Guild another lead, and Leo won a hectic late fight with a 4K to finally give Guild the series victory.
Now two of the favorites of this event and the two grand finalists from Reykjavík Masters, OpTic and LOUD, will meet in the lower bracket of their group. Guild move on to face KRU in the upper bracket final of Group A
