How BONKERS Could Be the Spark That Ignites Australian Valorant

The Valorant esports scene in Oceania (OCE) unfortunately suffered in 2021 as a result of the pandemic. The teams in the regions were finally given a chance to compete in an international tournament with the Valorant Champions Tour Asia Pacific (VCT APAC) Stage 1 Challengers via the Valorant Oceania Tour 2022. The previous year, the top teams from the Oceania Tour Championship that qualified for the North American VCT Last Chance Qualifier event, were unfortunately barred from competing due to COVID-19 restrictions and travel curbs.

Everybody expected the Valorant Oceania Tour 2022 to be a one-sided event with the region’s heavyweights ORDER and Mindfreak sweeping away their competitors. But, the region saw the emergence of an underdog, quite literally, a team that sports “Cheems” as its logo: BONKERS.

Competing through the region’s open qualifiers, BONKERS had to build up its street cred at each stage, making it all the way to Thailand to represent OCE in the APAC tournament, even slaying the Australian Goliath ORDER on its road to the tournament. Sadly, defeat at the hands of Persija Esports (PSJ) knocked BONKERS out of the tournament ruining its chances of making it to Reykjavik, Iceland.

BONKERS fought its own battles at the APAC tournament where the team played without one of its star players and also dealt with its coach not being able to travel with them. Despite the hurdles, it put up a strong showing at the APAC tournament while competing from Thailand and turned a lot of heads.

The team has since reportedly split up after returning from the APAC Challengers 1 tournament and currently, the team comprises of in-game leader (IGL) Jackson “Minimise”, Chris “NiceHacks” Wahle, and substitute player Gary “kalth” Howard.

Before the team disbanded, AFK Gaming had the opportunity to talk to Nick “tixx” Quinn (then a player of BONKERS), about the team’s journey so far.

The other former members of the team who were a part of its success are Riley “rDeeW” Wilkinson, Justin “skrawl” Lanzon, tixx, and stand-in player Noah “Nozz” McClafferty.

The team’s performance in the VCT APAC Challengers 1 started loads of conversations and discussions about OCE having another representative in the future.

BONKERS’ run in VCT APAC Challengers 1

As the winner of the Valorant Oceanic Tour 2022, BONKERS secured their spot in the group of VCT APAC Challengers 1 and was seeded into Group B with the likes of Persija Esports, Paper Rex, and Fancy United Esports. BONKERS suffered two major losses from Persija Esports, once in the opening match and later in the deciding match.

According to tixx, when going up against Persija, BONKERS’ major focus was improving its gameplay on a macro-level and spacing of games. He added that BONKERS was getting punished for its pacing where multi-frags were not traded out but worked on it the second time around. “It was a very competitive series and it could have gone either way. We did not really change much tactically,” he added.

BONKERS pulled a convincing win against Fancy United Esports (FU) with a map score of 2-0 in the elimination match. Following this, only Paper Rex (PRX) and Persija Esports (PSJ) managed to make it out of Group B.

“It was a good learning experience and we learned a lot from competing from Thailand. Especially taking the series off Fancy United Esports and getting multiple maps against Persija. It has helped a lot with our confidence in coming back into the OCE scene. We are hoping to get an additional slot through the play-ins,” said tixx while talking about BONKERS’ experience of competing against international teams. However, the team was keen on playing Paper Rex and Xerxia. Interestingly, tixx predicted that these two teams would emerge victoriously and qualify for the VCT Masters, which they ended up doing.

A Challenging Road to Challengers

The road to VCT APAC 2022 Challengers was not smooth for BONKERS. They had to overcome multiple difficulties even before the tournament kicked off. Interestingly, this was also a blessing in disguise, since the pressure on the team went down. “We didn’t have as much pressure as I thought we would have on us just because we had a stand-in for our duelist. We had a different coach as well. We were a bit nervous that our results could have a bearing on future slots for the region,” said tixx.

NiceHacks could not secure a travel passport on time and eventually missed out on the first APAC event of the year, forcing Nozz to fill in his big shoes. The team’s coach Jordan "Jordation" Frish, too, could not fly to Thailand with BONKERS after taking up university and stepping back from Valorant coaching. Mitchell “pilski” Pilipowski stepped in place of Jordation to coach the team during its APAC run.

“It was rough losing NiceHacks because he was our entry-fragger. Nozz did a phenomenal job for the circumstances he was put in but we did feel that we lacked a bit of that entrying and explosiveness that we once had. It changed the way we saw the game and also our agent composition as well as our chemistry in general,” tixx noted. While talking about working with pilski, tixx said that it was very easy to work with him and that he let the members do their own thing and adapted well around them. “He added a level of tactical-ness that we lacked previously.”

The team also did not change its scrim schedule or its practice regime for APAC Challengers 1, tixx said the team just scrimmed against Oceania teams and Southeast Asian (SEA) teams. “We practice from 6 pm Sydney time to 7 pm and straight into two maps of Oceanic scrims and then another two or three maps of SEA scrims. We would be scrimming against teams like Persija as well as other top teams in the region.”

An interesting take that tixx had on scrimming against teams from two different regions was the difference in the way Valorant is played in SEA and OCE. Tixx said that the SEA teams were a lot more aggressive and punishing. “What we found from moving from Oceanic to SEA was that we could not get away with a lot of the gimmick plays we do and the aggressive peeks that we would normally get away with within Oceania. Any misplay was basically punished for their aggression,” he added.

BONKERS’ regional stardom and success

BONKERS rightfully earned the bragging rights to be addressed as the number one team in Oceania. Just like any other team, BONKERS too had its own roster revisions. Tixx said that it was originally just the three of them – skrawl, tixx, and Minimise and later, they managed to pick up Bernard “m4jor” Chau and NiceHacks. “From there we played a few minor tournaments where we had a few wins and a few losses. Since m4jor did not really fit what we were looking for, we decided to pick up rDeeW,” he said.

“We did meet our expectations [in the Valorant Oceania Tour]. The only goal for the Valorant Oceania Tour was first-place and we achieved that pretty convincingly. We did have a rough loss in the opening playoff bracket to Iconic but after that, I don’t think we even dropped one map. We had a confident and strong end to the tournament,” stated tixx about BONKERS’ run through the open qualifiers for the region to the main event.

The team, despite a rough start to the main event, bounced back stronger and won four straight best-of-three matches against Crismas Disciples, Honey Badgers, Funcrew, and Iconic. Following this, they secured the spot in the finals to go head-to-head against ORDER.

“An issue that our scene has with looking at ORDER is viewing them as unbeatable. We just went in with the mentality that they are beatable and it gave us the edge and allowed us to have a bit of unpredictability. We just had confidence in our ability to match us against them and it worked,” pointed out tixx while narrating about BONKERS’ mentality going up against ORDER. BONKERS finally put an end to the winning streak of Australian powerhouse ORDER and claimed its first regional title in the Valorant Oceania Tour 2022. Currently, the OCE region only has one slot to compete in a VCT tournament and then qualify for the Masters event.

The Oceanic teams, last year, had to play through North America’s Last Chance Qualifier for a chance to compete in the VCT Masters. Unfortunately for the region, this route also fell through at the last minute given the COVID-19 situation, knocking out Australia from contention on the international stage.

On top of these circumstances, OCE as a region is not all that competitive currently, opined tixx. According to him, there are only three teams that could maybe take that top slot. He mentioned that BONKERS, ORDER, and a new team called Cat Girls were in contention for this. “It is a very uncompetitive region in the sense that there is a big gap between the top and bottom teams,” he added.

He also felt that another slot for the region is very much needed and that there are talks of it being potentially snatched away from a region like Vietnam. “Having just one slot is killing the scene. The Oceanic Valorant scene would really love that second slot even if it's just through the play-ins,” he reckoned.

The amount of support and fan-following that BONKERS has built in such a short amount of time is very impressive. On behalf of all of BONKERS, tixx thanked all the fans for their relentless support. “We are all stunned by how much support we’ve got. We see all the little messages and we see everything on Twitter and Reddit. Even if we cannot say thank you individually, we just want to thank you all so much,” he said.

The report by vlr.gg detailed that rDeeW, tixx, skrawl, along with Nozz are seeking new opportunities. On its official Twitter handle, BONKERS stated that it had a lot to announce over the next two weeks.

On 30th March, BONKERS also released a statement that it was parting ways with both Pilski and Jordation who were pivotal in the team’s successful run, both in its region and internationally.

According to vlr.gg at the time of writing, BONKERS had a rating of 1652 with a record of 16 wins and 9 losses in the Oceanic region, where it was ranked #1. With the team finding early success on the domestic stage and putting up a solid performance in the international event, we can only wait and see whether Riot Games shall offer a second slot for the OCE scene. For now, we shall eagerly wait to see the new BONKERS roster and how the team fares in the upcoming tournaments.