The group stage of VCT Masters Tokyo continues this week, and day three already gave fans the first big upset of this year’s Masters: Chinese VALORANT team Edward Gaming eliminated NAVI from the tournament today.
In a close match with excellent play from both sides, EDG took down NAVI 2-0 from the lower bracket. This gives NAVI an 0-2 record at Masters, making them just the second team to leave the tournament. While the young Chinese players managed to get the best of NAVI in the end, it was the veteran presence of players like Shao and SUYGETSU that kept the match extremely close all the way until the last round.
Shao finished the match with nearly 60 kills across two maps and an alarming +22 KDA. He also accomplished this feat on Astra and Brimstone, controller agents not known for their fragging potential.
These incredible statistics actually point to one of NAVI’s main flaws across the entirety of the match, however. While the team undoubtedly has star power—every member of the team has won an international VCT trophy—they seem to struggle to work as a unit.
At the beginning of the match on Pearl, NAVI’s composition immediately showed signs of a veteran roster failing to adapt to a new meta. While EDG went for the Viper and Harbor composition that has been making waves across the Pacific and Americas Leagues, NAVI opted for a standard single-controller composition instead.
With cNed on his usual Jett and Shao on Astra, it looked like the team was stuck in 2021.
It’s not that Astra doesn’t work on Pearl—she was a meta pick on that map for a long time—but in this case, it left Shao having to take matters into his own hands more than once. Though he didn’t net any extremely flashy aces or frags, he was the rock the team had to lean on to come back from their 7-5 deficit at the half and push themselves into overtime.
Oh yeah, and SUYGETSU also helped out a bit from the backline.
But in the end, NAVI lost Pearl in overtime 17-15. Despite some individual heroics, the team’s rotations and site retakes left something to be desired.
On Bind, things continued much in the same way. EDG debuted a composition again featuring Harbor and Viper, but this time with their star player ZmjjKK on Gekko, a strategy straight out of Korean team T1’s book. NAVI, on the other hand, again went with a composition where the most recently debuted agent came out in 2021.
NAVI again suffered from a very slow start to Bind, something that plagued them in their earlier tournament loss to NRG. Nevertheless, the veterans persevered again to send the map into overtime.
But EDG were on fire. They blazed through just two rounds of overtime without an issue, taking Bind 14-12 and their first international win.
This upset carries huge weight for several reasons. This is the first time an invited Chinese team has won at an international VCT event. The loss means that NAVI will not only be sent home from Masters but will now have to go straight back to the EMEA League where they will play in the region’s Last-Chance Qualifier.
EMEA is the only region in the tournament with such a caveat for their last-place team since they received an extra slot at Masters Tokyo after FNATIC’s LOCK//IN victory earlier this year. Yet that win only gives them an extra slot for Masters, not Champions. Therefore, the fourth-place finisher from EMEA at Masters does not get the auto-qualification.
It comes as a surprise to many that NAVI not only went 0-2 in the group stage but also finished last among the EMEA teams. As mentioned previously, there isn’t a single person on the roster who hasn’t held up a VCT trophy on stage before.
If NAVI want to make it through the EMEA LCQ and then have more success on the international stage, they will have to adapt their strategies to the new meta, even if it’s uncomfortable.
As for EDG, they will rematch against Korea’s T1 tomorrow, June 14 at 1 am CT, in another elimination match.
Published: Jun 13, 2023 09:55 am