Cover-Credits:
The Valorant Game Changers Championship 2023 kicked off on 28th November in São Paulo, Brazil at the Arena CBLOL and will end on 3rd. This $500,000 USD prize pool tournament features eight of the best female teams from around the world, hailing from different regions.
On the first day of the Valorant Game Changers Championship 2023, Asia Pacific's (APAC) Team SMG locked in a very interesting and surprising team composition (comp) which caught the Valorant community, both fans and analysts, by storm.
Team SMG's Comp Was a Mistake
The first day of the Valorant Game Changers Championship created so much hype and excitement for fans, thanks to Team SMG from APAC locking in a bizarre, wild team composition featuring four duelists. During the agent select against Evil Geniuses GC from North America, Team SMG stunned both viewers and analysts by locking in Phoenix, Neon, Reyna, Raze, and Cypher on Lotus.
It was a first time in a pro match that a team decided to roll with four duelists and play without Controllers for smokes, and Initiators for stuns, flashes, and information-gathering.
Despite the comp being out of the ordinary and nothing related to the current meta, Team SMG dominated Evil Geniuses on the map, winning it with a dominant 13-3 scoreline.
Moving onto the second map of the best-of-three (BO3) series, Team SMG seemed to have the momentum going. Haven also went in favor of Team SMG with a 13-7 scoreline. However, this time around the APAC representative had a sensible, meta comp.
After seeing Team SMG's comp on Lotus, the whole community was excited and thrilled about it and naturally, it became the topic of discussion in post-game interviews.
Talking to the Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) French broadcast, Team SMG's Odella "enerii" Abraham talked about the first game's composition.
The analyst asked why and when exactly the team decided to play with four duelists. Replying to this, enerii said, "To be honest, it was a wrong agent pick. We thought that it was a rehearsal, and we didn't know. Then we picked four duelists, and after we realized it was a mistake.”
Adding further she said, "Plus it’s our mistake, right? So we have to follow through with it. We accepted it was our mistake and we just kept playing. I think we handled it super well.”
In another post-game interview, enerii stated that they were doing a ping test and it was too late by the time they realized it was not.
Team SMG will be taking on reigning champion G2 Gozen on 29th November in the upper bracket semifinals of Valorant Game Changers Championship 2023.
