After a thrilling affair between Ninjas in Pyjamas and Acend to open the playoffs for EU Challengers One earlier today, the second VALORANT series of the day was an absolute stomping. Guild Esports crushed Alliance in the quarterfinals and will move on to face NiP in the next round.
Guild dominated on Split to open the series. Yacine had a strong performance on Raze with 23 kills, only nine deaths, and an average combat score of 410. Guild won the map on nine straight rounds that went through halftime.
Their dominance carried over into Haven with an unstoppable attack in the second half. They didn’t drop a single attacking round after halftime until it was already 12-5 in their favor and Alliance finally won a defense round on a desperate buy. That was the only round Alliance won in the second half, though, and Guild closed it out the next round, 13-6.
It was a tough day for Alliance, who only claimed 10 total rounds across both maps. But it was a tough ask for a team that just formed at the end of January and who just made a recent change before the second stage of the VALORANT Champions Tour began. Alliance parted ways with krea6on and signed French CS:GO veteran xms to a trial contract just prior to the beginning of Challengers.
In contrast, the Swedish roster core of Guild has been playing together for at least half a year now, playing under the name Bonk before they were signed by the U.K. organization last October. Guild have been slowly building momentum through the first phases of the VCT. They lost in heartbreaking fashion in one of the open qualifiers during stage one but rallied to make Masters and end up in the semifinals.
The second half of the quarterfinals starts on April 7 with Heretics facing Opportunists (ex-DfuseTeam) and FunPlus Phoenix taking on Team Vitality.
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