Valorant: Mandatory Cup Final Four impressions (NiP, HyP, fish123, 2G4L)
Edit 11/05: VoDs: YouTube (not fully uploaded yet), Twitch.
The first really serious EU tournament took place this weekend — Mandatory Cup, organised by French Valorant news site Mandatory.GG, and boasting an open qualification structure and a 10,000 Euro prize pool (only LVL Clash, which was almost exclusively German teams, and T1xNSG in NA have paid out five digits so far).
The first day was the normal fare — single-elimination bracket, Bo1, more games than not off-screen, the standard stuff for a beta tournament. The second day was a little more interesting — with just four teams left, we got Bo3, every game broadcast, and a third-placed playoff to guarantee that every one of the four teams would see at least 4 games.
The upshot is: in just one tournament, we get to see who some of the emerging top teams in Europe are, try to get a bit of a sense of what these teams are about. Let’s use that opportunity.
HONOURABLE MENTIONS
Couple of teams I should mention quickly that didn’t make semis, since they come up a few times in other teams’ backgrounds:
Prodigy: JEROME, mixwell, ScreaM, Shaiiko, mezii. Lost in QF to NiP. Despite having a name and a nice logo, should be emphasised: this is currently just a stack of guys who are represented by the Prodigy Talent Agency (who represent plenty of players on other stacks/teams, including several of the fish123 guys), not sure what the plan is for them long-term. Think ScreaM is generally the common factor here. Stacks using the Prodigy name have played and placed well at a couple of different tournaments (won Fnatic Proving Grounds, QF at COOLER Cup).
IDDQD: Taimou, kirdez, nixoon, TviQ, Riqu. Lost in QF to Team HyP. Have played a couple tournaments with mediocre results (lost in Ro16 at Fnatic Proving Grounds), thought they’d make top-4 here still but missed narrowly, still, nobody’s going to sleep on an IDDQD lineup after OW beta.
2G4L (4th)
BACKGROUND
These guys have a really interesting background as it happens — four of the five were (semi-)pros in Battalion 1944, which released into open access back in early 2018 and was essentially an attempt to make a multiplayer/esports title that recaptured the magic of the old CoD games (particularly CoD4, which a couple of the 2G4L guys also played at a high level). The game got a tiny bit of hype on said launch (I own a copy as it happens), but ultimately flopped as even just a plain ol’ multiplayer title — to put it in some context, it’s averaged 27 concurrent players on Steam at any one time over the month of April. UT99 is averaging 65. Unlucky, boys.
Still: by price earnings, rEplan and synde are tied for 2nd in the all-times earnings list from B1944, since they won the one big tournament it had (Blitzkrieg Masters 2018, a $50,000 prize pool tourney in Amsterdam) under the banner of UK org Team Endpoint, and from what I could gather they were pretty dominant for as long as that scene was around.
Fake and aleksi both also played B1944 for Endpoint for a time, albeit later on. The fifth, JESMUND, doesn’t seem to have played CoD/B1944 and is a more conventional T3 national scene CS:GO guy (rEplan at least also played CS at a decent level, even playing in one of the beer-league-level iterations of ENCE back in 2017).
Anyway, this was the biggest surprise for me of all the semi-finalists, even though they didn’t spring the biggest upset to get here. In general, their quarter of the bracket looked the weakest going in; the Team Nordic stack with emilio and pyth was the one team that stood out, and 2G4L didn’t jump out to me at all.
Which, actually, is really unfair to them, because they were coming off a very good placing — 2nd at Fnatic Proving Grounds, ahead of everyone except Prodigy. In my defence here, the entire HALF of their bracket THERE seemed much weaker than the other half, and they got absolutely hammered by Prodigy in the final. Still, though. Mea culpa on disregarding them entirely. This time around, Team Nordic dropped in the Ro16 to French stack StarS, and StarS in turn were handily dispatched in quarters by 2G4L.
IMPRESSIONS
Semi-final
An incredibly deflating first map performance — there’s not really anything good you can say about losing 4–8 on D on Split, especially after opening 3–0. Decent performance from rEplan in the first half in particular, but nowhere near enough to turn the overall tide unfortunately.
Haven opened poorly too — rEplan was visibly tilting, Fake did have a nice couple of rounds to make up for it, but it just felt like the Finns were thoroughly outgunned here, and even on a map where you can entry as aggressively post-pick as on Haven…well, you still need to get the pick in the first place, and it felt for the most part like nobody was in the same league as icepaperhands or L1NK on the Fish side on the day.
Did find a way to get back in it in the second half with a big personal turnaround from rEplan, but would tend to say that the final 13–10 score is perhaps a little flattering. Still, they did manage to show where their strengths do lie with some excellent teamplay on defensive executes and retakes.
Third-place playoff
Honestly beginning to think that Split isn’t notably D-sided at current peak play levels if you’re at all willing to be aggressive…24GL got absolutely crushed in the opening rounds (zero kills on the bottom three players after four rounds sums it up), rEplan again the bright spot but took a 3–9 deficit going into O. They did a decent job of bringing it back — Fake and JESMUND managed to finally take a little load off rEplan, combining for 29 in 11 rounds — but ultimately couldn’t quite get out of the deficit they’d let themselves fall into. Synde put up the only goose-egg in a half of the Final Four, going 0–8 (and 3–19 overall on the match).
Haven started so nicely, with an initial 4–0 lead, but it was the same story again — as good as 2G4L are when they get on a site, they just struggled to force an entry pick in the first place. JESMUND tried his best to take on that role almost solo through mid/short C as Razei, but couldn’t quite do it for the most part, enduring a 4–12 half for his troubles (though he did force the pick on round 12 that set things in motion for a 2G4L round win). Alas, they fared little better on D, and lost six straight to book a 4th-placed exit. Have to figure this will overall go down as a disappointing showing for the team.
NINJAS IN PYJAMAS (3rd)
BACKGROUND
To be clear here: it’s thoroughly unclear what’s going on long-term with the NiP roster, and this probably isn’t their final form. The org were one of the very first to sign a Valorant team, and as tends to be the case with these sorts of ‘acquisitions’ (think the HoN teams that suddenly became DotA2 teams), the initial roster was a roster from a smaller game jumping ship — in this case, the Paladins roster (who were reigning World Champions there for as much as that’s worth), minus the support player Bird (who became coach).
The roster is currently down another two players from that team — DiGeDoG (who appears to be in his native Australia currently), and Alex (who did play previous Valorant tournaments), leaving three spots non-committed for now (and why this is generally being referred to as ‘NiPmix’ or something along those lines by the organisers). rhyme and Zyppan have played at all events with them so far as far as I can tell, and Yacine (a NiP streamer who dabbles in T3 CS) replaced Alex for this cup.
In any case, this mix was always going to be in the semi-final reckoning; they’ve not done too badly in early tournaments, with the +Alex -Yacine variant winning Wave Esports Cup 1 on 24/4 (albeit against a very weak field) and coming second to fish123 in COOLER Cup on 25/4 (after beating them in groups). The win over the Prodigy stack in the quarters was technically an upset, but on balance, not THAT unlikely ultimately.
IMPRESSIONS
Semi-final
The impetus here was clearly for Tenner and bonkar (as the ex-Paladins guys and the two confirmed ‘non-mix’ members of this team) to take control of the game on a macro level, and it didn’t really feel like that happened — Tenner had some good moments on cleanup, but it never really felt like they were dictating the pace of the game. Even allowing for him being on Cypher, bonkar going 14–29 across both maps compared to PetitSkel’s 40–21 will be one to forget.
Haven was pretty bad from start to finish; as for Split, as much as my feelings on Split D being a little overrated are known at this point, 7–5 on D doesn’t really cut the mustard, and wasn’t really shocked to see HyPstack rip through them in the second half. Just felt like a team that was playing too conservatively overall outside of Yacine, and was too easy to overwhelm with the level of synergy they seemed to have. I did have them favoured over HyP, so a little disappointed.
Third-place match
Adaptation! rhyme picked up Omen over Brimstone this time around (Yacine was suitably impressed enough by CREA^’s Omen to openly tweet about it). Speaking of rhyme, a real map of two halves here. He was finally able to get going early, get an Operator in his hands, and absolutely rolled over everyone on O, putting up 13 kills. Together with Yacine's 18, they put up the highest number of kills in a half by any duo in the tournament.
The second half...3 kills in 11 rounds. As cold as cold can be, and this seems like it might be the concern going forward for rhyme - a player who might struggle if he can't get rhythm. NiP did manage to get it across the line in spite of that, but it took way longer than it should have; Zyppan fortunately stepped up big-time, Yacine just about scraped over the 30-bomb line, and bonkar built on a decent first half to put in a much-improved performance both on and off the scoreboard.
Really, this entire series was the Yacine show - he was genuinely extremely impressive, and if he's not thinking of playing Valorant as a more consistent thing (again, he didn't play previous tournaments, and while he has played a little bit competitively, up until this point he's mostly been a streamer in CS:GO), maybe he should at least give it a go.
HyPHyPHyP (2nd)
BACKGROUND
HyP has maybe flown under the radar a bit, just because the French CSGO scene has embraced Valorant with what can only be described as a bloody passion, and hence you have multiple stacks in every single tournament filled with old true top-tier names. Also, because it’s always hard to take a stack seriously when they’re named after one of the players.
However, while I won’t pretend to know more about OWL than I actually do, I can at least say this: he was playing regularly for an OWL team as recently as March of this year, and was on the French World Cup team. He has more recent experience in a tier-1 esports league than old CS pros, and while he’s running a self-titled stack, it is all composed of that winning formula of ex-CS T3 guys, and it has been the same stack over multiple tournaments.
So, maybe deserved a little more respect. But they got annihilated 13–3 on Split by fish123 in Fnatic Proving Grounds quarters, so maybe not. In any case, they had a easy first couple of rounds, and I was absolutely not expecting them to turn over IDDQD in the quarters here, but…then they did it, and we got at least one French team in the finals of a tournament being casted primarily in French and with a plurality of French teams. So, that’s nice.
IMPRESSIONS
Semi-final
A pretty good showing all around. HyP funnily enough probably had the worst time of anyone — it felt like he couldn’t buy a 1v1 win for roughly the first three halves of action, which is always a bit of an issue from your Breach player. Apart from him, could really give props to any of the other four; PetitSkel had some eye-popping numbers, but I think I was actually personally most impressed with LaAw, who really set the tempo on a lot of the tighter Haven rounds and pretty much single-handedly ran the retake that got them the sealing round on Split.
Omission of Brimstone for Omen on both maps (apparently the norm for this stack and CREA^) caught the eye — CREA^ did a good job with it, and there’s definitely a part of me that wonders if it’s going to be the way in which the early quadfecta of Breach/Brimstone/Cipher/Sage starts to break generally (you can probably do 90% of the jobs of Brimstone smokes with Omen smokes once you get used to it, and there’s arguments in general either for Omen or against Brimstone in the context of both Haven and Split).
Final
While they’ve been together for a while, the Hypstack are still ultimately just that — a stack being lead off by one player, that plays in a relatively loose style, not all that patient or keen on letting a round develop, just going to rush at you and hope that CREA^ or HyP can cause enough chaos to let them clean up on the skirmishing that follows.
It worked against the NiP mix; unfortunately for them, it did not work so well against Fish on Haven, and while there were a couple of occasions that they were able to create some chaos and play off said chaos (a couple of the pushes on C site come to mind), they ultimately struggled here, dropping to 4–8 on O. D went a little better — icepaperhands’ pocket Jett seems to have that Cypher syndrome of struggling on O (probably on account of how she needs cover to really do anything with her jump).
The winner felt pretty preordained by about 15 rounds in at the latest in most of the games today, but this one actually had a bit of a nail-biter — what looked like a signed and sealed win in round 22 (Fish 12–9 HyP) got completely turned around when HyP pulled a 4K on-site out of nowhere to save the round, which in turn forced Fish onto a dangerous-looking semi-buy — having to opt for Bulldogs at 2100 (and icepaperhands on a Marshal) rather than full rifles.
Ultimately and unfortunately, the HyPstack weren’t able to capitalise — soulcas, the one player with a real rifle, made a brilliant 2K entry through A short, and the first map went over to Fish 13–10.
Haven should have been their shot to guarantee a game 3 (in case you were wondering: no, you haven’t gone mad, there wasn’t a single Bind game on day 2, in stark contrast to NA every single team let it drop to third), but credit where it’s due, they still brought the heat going into Split even after a 0–3 start; Fearoth put up 16 in the first half en route to 6–6 on D — in theory not great, in practice so far this tournament, not all that bad of a platform to build on.
PetitSkel had probably the best round of the series to bring them to 9–7 at one point, but in the end, HyP couldn’t keep it going, and fell 9–13. Very credible placing, and a couple of players did mark themselves out — CREA^ will probably have some fun being lauded as the Omen whisperer for a few days.
fish123 (1st)
BACKGROUND
Think the general consensus on fish123 was that they were likely pre-tournament favourites; I know I had them up there. Fish (as I’m just going to call them from now on) are made up of a few guys from the UK CSGO scene, most of them having played with each other at one time or another over the last couple of years, albeit usually not at the same time.
The name that stood out immediately to me was ec1s, the 19-year-old rifler who spent a year on one of the Fnatic Academy iterations after winning in the second season of the GAMERZ reality show contest, but all of these guys have been around at the top of the UK in CS for the last couple years (albeit none of them breaking through beyond it).
While ‘dominant’ maybe isn’t the right word, they’ve come out of the gate very well in Valorant — they came all the way through from open qualifiers to win COOLER Cup (2–0ing NiP in the final), only dropped one map in GriziCup on 26/4 (an almost entirely French event), and finished 3rd/4th in Fnatic Proving Grounds on 8/5 (smashing HyPstack 13–3 but ultimately falling to Prodigy in the semis). Enjoyed a pretty easy ride to the semis this time around over various French stacks, and strengthened their position as favourites going into day 2 in most views.
IMPRESSIONS
Semi-final
Shouldn’t really be shocked given he out-and-out declares himself a “Player and Sniper for fish123” (though funnily enough, he seems to have rifled for most of his CS career, albeit his best showing by far did come as a primary AWPer in ESL Premiership Summer 2019 finals), but: icepaperhands is fully sick with a Marshal/Operator in his hands, honestly probably the best I’ve seen in Valorant so far (and Fish being the best team at making the most of a good sniper). Took the game to 2G4L all day, pulled off aggressive peek after aggressive peek, just a real masterclass performance.
Jett pick on Haven was a fantastic call — Haven is definitely Brimstone’s weakest map, and the way that he was able to essentially use it to entirely ignore any attempt by synde’s Sage to pin him down on A Long was beautiful. ec1s deserves a lot of the credit too overall though — great numbers and great plays given that he had the burden of IGLing too; another case of Fish flipping the usual script on both Split and Haven.
Final
Round two for icepaperhands’ Haven Jett, and pretty much the same deal — a massive frustration for Hyp on O, fell off slightly on D. Still, another top performance. but there was really nobody not getting in on the fun in the first half here — even Kryptix, who had by far the fewest contributions on the scoreboard in the semi-final series, opened 11–9.
As has been the case a few times, despite their dominance, some trouble by Fish in terms of cleaning things up on the back half; I don’t really have a good theory as to why that might be as of yet, but it’ll be something to watch out for as the overall level increases. It ended up coming down to soulcas on Raze — who had mostly been performing credibly but quietly in the semis, although he did top-frag the second map — to bring them over the line with back-to-back 2Ks in the last two rounds.
On Split…I actually don’t have a lot to say here, surprisingly. Struggled a little bit early, and it looked way too close for too long, but in the end, it was always going to take a lot for fish123 to lose D-side on Split given how solid they’ve looked on the map. L1NK was absolutely spectacular on cleanup, and ec1s got over his jitters from the end of the last map pretty smoothly en route to a credible 19 kills.
FINAL FOUR SELECT TEAM
ec1s (fish123): Pretty much just has to be a given — Fish are clearly more than just a collection of individual talents, and as IGL, you have to give him a large part of the credit for their performance even if his personal performance suffered for it at times (and it very clearly did towards the end).
icepaperhands (fish123): Didn’t frag out in the same way as some other guys did (soulcas, CREA^) but: best sniper player at the tournament, don’t think it was particularly close, he changed the way that Fish were able to play the map in a way that similar guys just didn’t manage to.
L1NK (fish123): As much as I loved what I saw out of LaAw, I can’t really argue the point that this wasn’t just a great showing from L1NK — executed his role as Sage to perfection and was rock-solid as the last line of defence on a number of rounds. If you were to try to name an overall MVP of day 2, while he didn’t do too many flashy plays, I think you’d be hard-pressed to argue against L1NK — his 3Ks and 4Ks down the stretch single-handedly closed out Split for Fish in the final.
PetitSkel (HypHypHyp): Feels like judging the effectiveness of Cypher players is going to be one of those tricky little things in Valorant, but think it’s hard to argue that he didn’t have a good performance overall here.
Yacine (NiP): Even if he is on Raze, even if he is being set up well, and even if he didn’t have to play Fish, not much you can say against the level of production he put on show here.
