Guild are moving on to the main event of EMEA VCT Challengers One after a nearly flawless run in the open and closed qualifiers, capped off with a 3-0 win against a Team Vitality roster that refused to surrender despite often trailing. Guild’s new-look VALORANT roster became the first qualified EMEA team to join the invited teams at the Challengers One main event today.
Guild came out firing on Vitality’s pick of Breeze, with Sayf’s monstrous performance on Jett showing why the team held on to him heading into the new year. He got plenty of help with new addition Russ supplementing attack rounds with Skye, while koldamenta racked up plenty of assists using Viper’s utility. Vitality still fought their way back to an 11-11 tie, but lost a devastating anti-eco round to Sheriffs that pushed Guild over the finish line 13-11.
Guild put together another impressive attack side to start their pick of Bind, with Sayf delivering more huge rounds early on to grow the Guild lead. That lead ballooned to 8-1 before Vitality put together a run through half-time to tie the map at 8-8, thanks to some big pushes from bramz. But just as quickly as Vitality got back into the map, Guild shut the door with steady defense in five of the next six rounds to secure Bind 13-9 and take a 2-0 series lead.
It was more of the same on Split, with Guild getting out to a big lead again—this time on defense. Leo had a stellar first half on Sage, with 15 kills on top of his strong defensive ability placements to give his team a 9-3 lead at halftime. Vitality’s already slim chance at a desperate comeback became even slimmer after they lost the second-half pistol round, but for the third map in the row they put up a fight with their backs against the wall. Once they got their OPs, they were able to turn Guild’s 11-3 lead into an 11-11 tie. But Guild prevented collapse again with two consecutive rounds after two straight A site takes, preventing another Vitality comeback and taking the series 3-0.
In nine best-of-three matches across the open and closed qualifier, Guild only dropped a single map en route to securing a spot at Challengers One. Vitality aren’t not out of the closed qualifier yet, but they will drop down to the loser’s finals for a match against BIG for one more crack at the main event.
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