Leaving another week behind at VCT, giants knelt, surprise teams soared. However, GUILD and Fnatic continue to dominate their respective groups.
Another team that had a good week was OG LDN UTD, beating G2 Esports and achieving their first win of the tournament. NAVI likewise managed to topple BIG, taking its first win.
Group A: Fnatic beat their arch-rival Acend
It was clear from the very beginning that Week 3, when VCT champion Acend in Group A will face his toughest rival, Fnatic, would be a great one. Unfortunately things did not go as Acend had hoped, as Fnatic used the Turkish Leading Fade to swept away the first champion in Ascent with a score of 13 – 4. In Icebox, the final nail was hammered into Acend’s coffin, as the team regressed to the middle of the standings, Fnatic took the lead.
At the top of the leaderboard, right next to them, is FunPlus Phoenix, who eliminated FOKUS, winner of DACH: Evolution. While Breeze was relatively midway through, the German team could not hold back against Dmitry ‘SUYGETSU’ Ilyushin’s incredible Viper and Sage performance, SUYGETSU once again proving to be EMEA’s premier Scout player.
OG LDN UTD was also one of the highlights this week, surprising the audience with a 2-1 win against EMEA’s samurai, namely G2 Esports. The team managed to beat G2 in Fracture at the end of the series that was extremely difficult, ensuring one of the biggest disappointments of the week.
Group B: The rise of GUILD and the fall of Liquid
As soon as we saw GUILD and Liquid face off in the opening week of Week 3, we knew an incredible match awaited us. In the three-map match, Liquid used Fade to their advantage and managed to take a game from the group favourite, but their strength ran out early and eventually lost to the English representative differently in Fracture.
M3C showed up as Liquid stumbled, beating BBL for second place. In the match where Ayaz ‘nAts’ Akhmetshin played just like… nAts, the team managed to beat BBL 2-0, even using their secret weapon Neon.
At the end of the 3rd week, the rankings in groups A and B are as follows:
Group A
- Fnatic: 3-0
- Acend: 2-1
- FunPlus Phoenix: 2-1
- G2 Esports: 1-2
- MV LDN UTD: 1-2
- FOCUS: 0-3
Group B
- GUILD: 3-0
- M3C: 2-1
- Team Liquid: 2-1
- BBL: 1-2
- Natus Vincere: 1-2
- Berlin International Gaming: 0-3