Valorant: Wave Esports Invitational Cup preview

For the first time in a while (maybe ever), we’re getting a fairly big EU Valorant tournament midweek — the Wave Esports Invitational Cup. You may be familiar with the name, so to clarify: yes, there has already been a Wave Esports Invitational, last month. Yes, it’s the same org running both.

It’s worth the confusion, because this looks like a genuinely good event:

• The field here is competitive, if not world-beating. The absolute top tier from closed beta (fish123, HyPHyPHyP, NiP, mixwell/ScreaM) are missing, but pretty much everyone else is here.
• The format is pretty good — Bo1 groups and simultaneous Bo3 quarter-finals on Tuesday, Bo3 semi-finals and final on Wednesday. About as good as you’re going to get for a midweek tournament.
• It’s midweek Valorant after a weekend where we were forced to feed on the scraps of the G2 Ignition Series. Can’t say fairer than that!

So: here’s a preview of all 16 teams. Skim accordingly.

Group A

Prediction: Prodigy 1st, Mattistack 2nd, nolpenki 3rd, VALORANDO 4th

Prodigy

Let’s be clear here: this stack has the Prodigy name, but it’s different to the Prodigy that you may have seen popping up high on the placings as every tournament. Very brief primer for those unfamiliar: Prodigy is a player/coach/talent agency rather than an esports org, they represent a lot of the top EU talents in Valorant in general, and a variety of stacks with a huge array of players, but mixwell/ScreaM as constant features, have been at and done well at most big tournaments (1st at Fnatic Proving Grounds, 2nd at Solary Cup, 3–0 in groups at Epulze Valorant Prodigies, etc.)

With mixwell now on G2, and ScreaM’s status unknown but probably signing with some org soon, that particular formation seems likely to be retired, but Prodigy will probably keep fielding teams under the banner short-term to give some shine to other players under their aegis, which is what they’re doing here.

The big two here are the first two — luckeRRR, who was the star Operator on those early VALORANDO lineups, and rhyme, who was with NiP throughout closed beta. For the rest…JEROME is Prodigy’s CEO, Luzuh is a CS:GO guy standing in, neither are prospects. rodeN has played for a couple of French stacks (including previous incarnations of Prodigy, and Inetgamers), does appear to be looking to make a serious move into Valorant.

In any case, though, luckeRRR and rhyme are the names on show here, and between the two of them, this Prodigy lineup does probably have the firepower to match up with most other teams here, including the rest of this group. On balance, they’re favourites to come out in 1st here, and have a decent shot in the playoffs; it’s just that, for once, they’re not tournament favourites.

VALORANDO

Nobody quite knows what’s going on with VALORANDO right now, because they’ve been playing with different mixes every week in local competition…including zonixx, who is heading up his own stack as it stands. The above five are all still formally part of the team (Braexco having stepped back), and rAx/pAn/sim19 seem pretty likely to play…but rAx actually played AGAINST VALORANDO at the Fragster Invitational last week. So, whatever. We’ll see.

Anyway, the teams they’ve been cobbling together have kept winning in German tournaments, but no matter what they put out here, limit your expectations; things haven’t gone well for them for the most part internationally even when they had luckeRRR and a more stable lineup in general (SFs at Valhalla W3, SFs at the last Wave Invitational, 0–3 at Epulze).

NOTE 23/06

So…yeah, that seems a pretty clear indication that there’s something going on with regards to the VALORANDO project possibly not being here long-term anymore and just using this opportunity to try out players etc. Especially with rAx playing for the zonixx stack.

Don’t know enough about the ins and outs of German scene to comment for the most part, but AslaN is a little interesting — been hearing/seeing good things about his pug play and he apparently subbed in on that luckeRRR streamer stack that nearly knocked off NiP in Twitch Rivals #1 QFs.

Mattistack

Probably the most intriguing lineup overall here. While the stack bears a different name (matti, a Danish player of not much past repute), the central figure here is legendary Overwatch pro Taimou, who got on the competitive play train almost immediately in closed beta, fielding stacks alongside TviQ at the three big early tournaments (Fnatic Proving Grounds, Mandatory Cup, Solary Cup) under the IDDQD label.

Those teams, to put it politely, performed fairly crappily, generally going out in the Ro16 and similar (they’re still scheduled to play at Rise of Titans later this week as it stands, we’ll see if that happens), but the Mattistacks have done better, winning both the Open and Closed TL Academy tournaments in the last week of closed beta, and taking out a couple of other teams at this tournament (Absolute Legends, THOSE GUYS) in Trovo Challenge qualifiers last week.

So, may be something to like here, and I tend to think that they’re probably #2 in this group on paper. Taimou asides, N1KOLA was pretty good as the Sage specialist on FABRIKEN for a while, and as you can see, indications are that they may be fielding Rain from FaZe CS:GO (EDIT: they are not doing so, it’s a different Valorant-primary player from Israel, thanks to Tanizhq for the heads-up) (they’ve typically used JESMUND of former 2G4L fame, but did use another big-name CS standin — dev1ce — at one of the TL Academy tournaments). Could be fun.

nolpenki

Came through open qualifiers. Not much to say about these guys, but they’ve been around for a good few weeks now, with best showing being 2nd in that TL Academy Closed series at the end of closed beta (2nd to Mattistack). vakk and l0udly are probably the guys to watch — l0udly seems like the prototypical entry rifler in the mold of guys like Yacine, Vakk was apparently an emerging young talent in PUBG and seems to be running the show here. Don’t think they’re favoured against either Prodigy or Mattistack, but both matchups seem eminently winnable.

Group B

Prediction: FABRIKEN 1st, Worst Players 2nd, ROYALS 3rd, FrenchFrogs 4th

ROYALS

Last couple of weeks have been less than ideal for ROYALS. The team came out of closed beta looking like the lead contenders to the existing top-4 of fish123/Prodigy/HyP/NiP after back-to-back wins in the Valhalla Invitational, but floundered badly at Epulze — albeit in what was absolutely a group of death — going 0–3 against Prodigy, FABRIKEN, and 2G4L.

To follow this up, the team now find themselves in the midst of roster changes, with both leakeN and neph parting ways with the team. The core of DPS (IGL), kpiz (Sage main), and hype remains in place, but at the moment, it’s not clear what’s going to happen with regards to replacing the other two, especially not for this week — could be pubstars, could just be UK CS:GO scene guys, could be anything in-between. We’ll see.

Unfortunately for them, this is another very challenging group, and on paper, hard to see them beating either Worst Players or FABRIKEN when they’re likely to have such limited prep with their 4th and 5th. Their closed beta successes were marked by sound fundamentals, playing as more than the sum of their parts, and all those old sports cliches; even if they get some real talents to fill those spots (and neph in particular will probably be missed), and it ends up being the guys they go with long-term, and it’s all going to work out and we’re all going to make it, bro, this first tournament seems likely to be a struggle. Still, as we’ve seen with Zyppan and FABRIKEN, it’s not impossible that the guys they get just mesh with the system left in place and we see some Bo1 upsets as a result.

NOTE 23/06:

Stand-ins are apparently Kasper and Russ. Both CS:GO old heads, both know kpiz/DPS going way back, neither looking to go for it in VALORANT as far as I know, so eh. Same prognosis, likely 3rd.

Worst Players

By the time this is out, there’s going to be a bit more tape out there on Worst Players, because they’re playing Take The Throne tonight against Team Turkey and (potentially) HyPHyPHyP. So…I don’t know, go watch those serieses, I’m sure they’ll be good.

Anyway. WP find themselves in a pitched battle right now to prove who out of them and Party Parrots is the better CIS lineup. Party Parrots pulled ahead early, WP jumped into the lead after knocking HyPHyPHyP out of Epulze and then winning Twitch Rivals EU #2 over mostly-FABRIKEN among others (albeit we should say: it absolutely helped that they happened to be able to field a full 5 instead of 4 plus an unrelated streamer), and…we’ll call G2 Ignition for PP I guess, since ANGE1 and Shao got to show off a bit more than chiwawa did.

This will be one of the stiffer fields Worst Players has faced — as much as Twitch Rivals turned out to be decently competitive overall, every other team was basically missing at least one player because of the streamer stuff (and they dodged the top Western European teams), and they had a three-team group for all intents and purposes at Epulze.

Hence, make no mistake —despite the gathering hype train, they come into this tournament actually relatively untested, especially compared to Party Parrots. Big tests for chiwawa and pipsoN — both have put up some crazy performances against lower-tier and stream teams, both struggled a bit to some degree at G2 Ignition (pipsoN moreso than chiwawa). However, if you want to see something truly amazing, just watch dimasick on Cypher — as far as I know, he’s still playing on a steady 100 ping, and yet still doing well, truly showing off that old man game.

FrenchFrogs

FrenchFrogs are a bit of a weird lineup. On the one hand, they’ve pretty much played in one form or another in a lot of different tournaments, including Solary Cup, and have a couple of players who look like pretty legit prospects. G2 Ignition viewers will have seen davidp perform quite well on Mixwell’s winning lineup, and to be clear, that’s not purely a product of that team just being monstrously unbalanced in the format there; he’s put in quite a good performances with various stacks (including at least one iteration of Prodigy). He has said that he’s looking for an org, so we’ll see what happens; probably one of the better post-nerf Sage players I’ve seen to be honest, and might work out really well for a team looking for a more support-oriented player (insofar as it’s possible to judge these things from the outside looking in).

On the other hand…they’ve never actually done too well, all things considered. They got 3rd at that last-week-of-closed-beta TL Academy tournament, and that’s pretty much been the highlight to date. The most prominent member of the stack, Kinstaar, is a Fortnite pro and streamer of decent repute, and doesn’t seem too serious about pursuing Valorant; he claimed to have retired from Fortnite (as many did) a while back, but looks to be attempting a return to it as of late. Finally, as alluded to: there doesn’t seem to be much intent to turn this lineup, partially or wholly, into a longer-term lineup.

In any case: probably last in this group, would be surprised to see otherwise even allowing for it being Bo1. They’re not that far off a lot of the lower-tier teams in the field more broadly here, but it would be a bit of a shocker to see them take down any of these three, let alone two of them.

NOTE 23/06:

Small one: Kinstaar isn’t playing this one, it’ll be Pase, a Sova main who’s played with other French stacks (most prominently the BlackBelts lineup that got to the LeStream x BMW show match) instead.

FABRIKEN

Despite a disappointing result at Epulze last week — 3rd in their group behind Prodigy and 2G4L — still very much THE team in the ascendancy in Europe. Why are they in this group with both ROYALS and Worst Players? Well, in true FABRIKEN fashion, they went straight to OQs here, qualified for the tournament before any other teams were even announced, and hence single-handedly created yet another group of death, after already playing a group of death last week at Epulze. If you don’t like the testicular fortitude here, I don’t know what to tell you.

Anyway. Despite Epulze, FABRIKEN are still one of the best teams in Europe — extremely well-organised, multiple significant individual talents, and I think they have to be favoured to win the group here (and if I were setting odds, I think they’d possibly be narrow favourites to take the whole thing with no old Prodigy/G2 and no HyPHyPHyP here). The one interesting wrinkle is going to be what they end up doing with their team comps. For those who haven’t been following, the team made a roster change coming out of closed beta — out went N1KOLA, their Sage specialist, and in came Zyppan, formerly a Breach/Sova specialist for NiP who had left the team in order to take up a more explicitly rifle entry-oriented role (I don’t want to say ‘Raze main’, but, y’know) on another team.

Now, this was a positive change, insofar as Zyppan had multiple 30+-frag games at Epulze and immediately elevated himself from looking solid (on NiP) to looking like a breakout star and potential team centrepiece as a primary rifler (on FABRIKEN). However, the issue: if Zyppan is to take that role, you’re pressured to have someone else take up the Sage mantle. Which gives you three basic options: 1) someone goes there full-time, 2) you share the role around on different maps, 3) you try to play without Sage.

The first is how most teams approach this problem, while the second and third have been tried in limited fashion (Absolute Legends have done the second at times for instance, while NiP apparently did the third in an Absolute Masters matchup against Inetgamer). For FABRIKEN…it’s been a mix of 1) and 3). ShadoW, the team’s primary Operator and Breach specialist, played Sage on every map in their ultimately unsuccessful run at Epulze, and played it at least once in TL Academy this week (which they ended up winning). However, in said TL Academy run, they more commonly just tried to run without Sage at all — ShadoW got his Breach, Zyppan got his Raze, and they tried to make it work from there.

It remains to be seen whether they’ll try it here; while I’m all for challenging orthodoxy, it does feel like a tactic that’s always going to be rather high-variance against teams of a similar skill level (no Sage heal or rez making it extremely hard to justify taking any sort of risk for information), and after all, while the TL Academy field was actually decent, clearly teams like 5Dogs and Copenhagen Flames are not quite on the same level as Worst Players or ROYALS. Indeed, they actually opted out of it for the Winner’s Bracket final against Copenhagen Flames (Bo1), and almost got screwed at least partially because of it in the Grand Final against 5Dogs (Bo3), going down 2–10 on O on Bind before pulling it back on D to win 13–11.

Still, it’s something to watch out for, especially since the ShadoW Sage solution isn’t without its issues — having your primary Operator on Sage is as far from ideal as you can get (since even asides the problem of a Sage dying first in a round, you have almost nothing in movement or vision tools to enable you to snipe), and ShadoW visibly struggled at Epulze while having to do it. It might end up working out, but it’s definitely one of those problems that’s going to require a lot of trial and error over coming weeks.

Group C

Prediction: 2G4L 1st, Team zonixx 2nd, Absolute Legends 3rd, THOSE GUYS 4th

2G4L

Could end up being a great opportunity here. 2G4L have been around since early beta, but have been a bit up-and-down — 2nd at Fnatic Proving Grounds (but lost badly in the final), 4th at Mandatory Cup (again, lost badly in semis and final), disappointing at the Valhalla Invitationals, but stepped up last week and took down ROYALS and FABRIKEN (and played Prodigy close) to take 2nd in the group of death at Epulze.

With all due respect, this on paper is probably the softest in the competition, and while Bo1s can always bring upsets, it would be a major, major surprise if 2G4L failed to follow through here. Eyes on synde here — he’s not been their biggest fragger (that honour belongs to replan, who has consistently been excellent), but he’s been stepping up well over the last few weeks, and a lot of the case for 2G4L’s upside longer-term rests on his potential (he was a very handy player back in Battalion 1944).

Team zonixx

It…still isn’t clear what’s going on here at the time of writing. I’ll try to explain. zonixx is one of those classic CS guys who had an OK career as a player, but is more known in his national scene as a streamer (izak being another relatively successful example). He has mostly been playing Valorant for the last few months, and to be fair, isn’t bad at it. He’s even stood in for VALORANDO — the aforementioned #1 team in Germany — in some local scene tournaments, and played with rAx and pAn at Twitch Rivals.

So, what’s the deal here? Why is there a streamer stack at a tournament like this? Especially why is there such a stack when said streamer more commonly plays with one of the other teams already in the tournament than anything else (Ultimate has also appeared for VALORANDO at least once)? Well, the key here is the one other name that I am reasonably confident will be playing for them in this tournament, in the form of famed CS 1.6 and CS:GO IGL gob b.

The short version is that, between the way that VALORANDO seems to put out different teams every tournament, the fact that gob b is actively playing in these German scene tournaments, zonixx and gob b teaming up repeatedly at streamer invitationals (including Twitch Rivals), the fact that both gob b and zonixx are part of the BIG (Berlin International Gaming) org…it sure as hell seems like there’s a process going on wherein they’re trying to figure out a future lineup for BIG which may or may not subsume VALORANDO into it.

Anyway. As mentioned, the gob b stacks have done decently, including a 3–0 in groups at Twitch Rivals (over 4/5ths of FABRIKEN), so this actually might be a little interesting, especially with AL maybe shuffling up their roster. Provisionally have to still say 3rd-best, especially given that we have no clue who exactly is going to be here on the day and the sort of account that VALORANDO have given of German teams internationally, but…let’s see how this plays out.

NOTE 23/06:

Ultimate was on VALORANDO in that Fragster Invitational, alexRr was on Team zonixx. This is likely (both in reality and intention) the strongest of the German lineups here, and I’m inclined to hence say that they come out ahead of AL now.

THOSE GUYS

…pass. A Polish scene team, won a couple of tournaments there, but haven’t been seen internationally as it stands. If I had to bet on it, I’d probably lean towards the Polish scene in general being a pretty good contributor to the talent pool in Valorant given what we saw in both CS:GO and LoL (and we’ve already had Patitek and NEEX come out of it in the first couple of months of Valorant), but who knows? Another team where it’s 4th until proven otherwise.

Absolute Legends

Another one of those teams that emerged very early in beta (fun trivia: while they’re part of the Absolute Legends org, they actually had to get through OQ to qualify for Absolute Masters, they were picked up after said qualifier). Have done a little, but not a lot — 2–0ed their group at Absolute Masters (albeit a weak group), 1–2 at Epulze (beat VALORANDO, lost to fish123 and Fordon Boars), made it through OQ here. They also did win the last Wave Esports Invitational for whatever that’s worth (not a lot, given the field there).

Far from awful, and as I said, I’d give them a slight edge over the zonixx stack prior to knowing the exact lineup, but not much in terms of expectations here. Note that they have added a new player coming into this — vicious, a Swedish player who’s subbed in for various teams at small Nordic tournaments. If he plays, expected to replace xek, but not 100% confirmed as of yet.

NOTE 23/06:

(Apparently) confirmed that vicious is in over xek. The zonixx stack looks good so I guess 3rd now but we’ll see,

Group D

Prediction: Party Parrots 1st, 5Dogs 2nd, RATVI 3rd, Wave 4th

Party Parrots

The other CIS stack. If you haven’t heard me wax lyrical about ANGE1 yet somehow, suffice to say: I love ANGE1, he’s incredible, performed miracles in CS:GO and I think he’s pound-for-pound the best pure IGL in Valorant so far. After experimenting with a couple of other lineups early in closed beta, he brought together this lineup, and they’ve been on that old Hellraisers trick of defying all expectations since (while, somehow, despite the fact that he’s in his 30s, regularly leading his team in kills. As Brimstone. While IGLing). Should say that Shao, their primary Operator and Sova/Raze main, has also been very impressive.

Two very strong showings late in beta at the Valhalla Invitationals, 2–1 and through groups at Epulze, and won their first non-CIS tournament last week when they romped through TL Academy (their worst map numerically was a 13–9 win in the final). Pretty good record. Will they qualify here? I would be very shocked if they didn’t. Are they contenders for the tournament overall? Yes, absolutely.

Will they win their group? Well…remember how they went 2–1 in series play at Epulze groups? That one loss was to…StartedFromCS, who beat them 2–1 in a Bo3 that was tight for the first two maps at least. So, for Bo1, flip a coin, I guess — if pressed, I’d say PP if Split or Bind, SFCS if Haven or Ascent. Which…doesn’t really help, I guess. Whatever. Let’s say 2nd in groups into winning the whole thing as a compromise.

NOTE 23/06: SFCS pulled out, they were replaced by 5Dogs. Still legitimate opposition, and 5Dogs played a competitive Bo3 against PP in TL Academy Closed W1 finals, but would expect PP to win the group now if we’re keeping score.

5Dogs

NOTE 23/06: There was a section here on StartedFromCS, mostly tried not to touch what was already written with these little updates, but think it makes more sense to remove it here.

So, no SFCS. Shame. What we do have, however, are 5Dogs, and the first fun thing to know about 5Dogs if you weren’t one of the five people on the planet who actually likes PUBG esports (I was one of those people) is that this is one of the few teams still sticking up there that’s mostly ex-PUBG guys — Scoom was a fairly big name for a couple of years there, and Quick and koldamenta…well, they weren’t, but they were around. So, now that original VALORANDO have gone away, these are the ‘PUBG guys’, I guess. Fun.

Scoom was around a bit in closed beta, but with limited success (Ro16 at Mandatory Cup, got an Absolute Masters invite but lost the first match, they did win the loser’s match and play the decider on Thursday). However, this new lineup has been making a little bit of noise over the last couple of weeks, including runs to the final in both post-beta weeks so far of TL Academy (losing to Party Parrots and FABRIKEN respectively, but in competitive fashion). As mentioned in the FABRIKEN section, they were actually well in contention in that series, taking a 11–4 lead on Bind at one point and bringing it back from a poor early start on Haven to get themselves within range at the end (10–11).

Hence: even allowing for teams tending to play a bit loose during the TL Academies, this is a team that’s been putting in serious performances against good opposition over the last couple of weeks. No single huge standout here; the non-PUBG guys, doAm (primary Operator) and Miikasd, have been the biggest fraggers as tends to be the case, but Scoom’s definitely been above replacement level on Cypher, and Quick…Quick plays Viper on Bind, and seems to know every possible trick therein, so…watch Quick’s Viper on Bind.

Don’t think they’ll beat Party Parrots, but they’re favoured over Wave and RATVI in my opinion, and we’ll see from there.

Wave Esports

Probably the biggest unknown of the unknowns here. Signing was announced yesterday, and yes, this is the same org that’s running the tournament. To be fair, they have a little pedigree behind them — a few 2nd-place spots in German scene tournaments under the ‘unleash’ label — so this isn’t a case of a TO placing a team that has no business being here at all, but…still pretty much unknown, favourites for the wooden spoon here.

NOTE 23/06:

Confirmed their 5th.

RATVI

The Swedish scene’s been in a little bit of a weird place so far in Valorant — plenty of players around, and FABRIKEN of course making a real go at it, but we’ve not actually seen much in terms of the legendary Swedish stacks that emerge fully clothed from the ground and dominate every FPS title within days of its release. FABRIKEN asides, DREAMCHASERS under emilio have been a bit up-and-down, and Limpone’s Resurrection Sickness stack has done OK but not played much, so I guess they’re really not doing THAT badly. Still, only one Swedish stack in the top-10 in Europe? Just feels wrong for a tacshooter somehow.

Well…enter RATVI? Maybe? We’ll see. This particular stack emerged shortly after the end of closed beta, and have a few good results, including 4th in the previous two weeks of TL Academy (or, as it’s also known, ‘ just barely not making it on the stream, argh’), and making it through Rise of Titans qualifiers (albeit barely). Have to have them above Wave because they’ve done well in what have been pretty competitive fields (and they only went out in TL Academy Week 1 because of schedule conflicts), but again, largely an unknown, so let’s wait and see.