Version1 Stuns Team Liquid at VCT Masters Iceland 2021: Stats, Highlights and Interview

The North American representatives Version1, who entered the VCT 2021: Stage 2 Masters - Reykjavík with a substitute has managed to stun the European top dog Team Liquid, handing them a rough ‘2-1’ defeat as they advance further into the tournament. Both the teams fought hard in the first two maps, but Version1 strangled Team Liquid in the decider with a decisive ‘13-4’ victory, sending them down to the lower bracket. Version1 is now on a two-match win streak, quickly becoming a fan favourite after starting out as an underdog due to Maxim “wippie” Shepelev being replaced by Jamal “jammyz” Bangash for the tournament, as he was unable to acquire a visa.

NA vs EU: Version1 Hands Team Liquid a Heavy Loss

Version1 after having achieved a clean ‘2-0’ victory against the Japanese representatives Crazy Raccoon in their opening match of the tournament, was looking in good shape. However, many still had doubts about how they would fare against Team Liquid, the best Valorant team from Europe.

The narrative going into the map was ‘NA vs EU’, which was the better region when it came to competitive Valorant. The match between Version1 and Team Liquid was the first such encounter between the 2 regions in the tournament, so the stakes were clearly high and Version1 managed to prove a point with a statement third map victory.

Result

Version1 and Team Liquid fought really hard in the first two maps. While Team Liquid managed to win Version1’s map pick Split by securing a victory in the third overtime, Version1 came back on Ascent to take the series down to the decider on Haven.

Unfortunately, when push came to shove Team Liquid choked hard as they only managed to win 4 rounds. Version1 ran rampant, doing what they pleased and controlling the pace of the final game throughout. Liquid was unable to adapt, as they kept getting hard countered every time they tried to come up with a counter-strategy.

Stats

• Penny was the standout player for Version1, popping off on the Jett in every single map. He provided his teams with some bold entries and held down the sites by perfectly handling the brunt of Team Liquid’s aggression.
  
  
• However, the real firepower was brought by the Team Liquid duo of ScreaM and Jamppi. Playing Sage on the first map, ScreaM secured 30 kills in total, followed by 31 kills being taken by Jamppi in the second one.
  
  
• The third map was dominated by none other than Zellsis who secured 24 kills in total along with an insane ACS (Average Combat Score) of 387. 

Highlights

A critical penta kill from Penny to put a huge dent to the Liquid advance on the first map. Unfortunately it was not an ace because one of the five kills was that of a revived player.

A bold play from penny to clutch yet another round for Version1 as he dares to peek through the Viper's wall with an Operator in his hands, finds a kill and dashes back to safety. 

Penny pulls off a crazy double kill clutch on the second map while surviving on just 6 HP.

Zellsis with the insane 2v1 clutch as he sneaks his way around to catch both ScreaM and L1NK from behind. 

Zellsis secures the victory for Version1 on the final map by clutching a difficult 1v2 situation as he runs circles around Team Liquid soulcas and Jamppi. 

Interview: Penny Reveals Why Version1 Picked Split as Their Map Pick

In the post-match interview, Penny who was the standout player for Version1 tonight came forward to describe the series as crazy, while calling it the most intense series he had ever played. He went on to speak about how he wanted to keep his gameplay keep natural and achieved success in doing so, as evident from his performance.

Penny further revealed that “We had not actually played a lot of Split before we left. I am sure it was our least played map in practice, the only reason we picked it was because they (Team Liquid) banned Icebox, and we wanted to play Icebox.”