The VCT Masters Tokyo tournament continued with the playoff bracket as one of the biggest names and experienced teams in VALORANT got knocked out of the tournament on Sunday.
DRX was the side that bowed out to America’s NRG in a game that showed NRG learned from their mistakes and bounced back from a tough Saturday. Coincidentally, both teams finished the season second in their regions, enduring a tough end to the season.
Ardis “ardiis” Svarenieks’s 268 average combat score across the two maps was enough to see him win the star player award of the 2-0 win. He gave his thoughts after the victory in a post-match conference stating that the team needed the win after a bad performance from the team on Saturday.
“I think we just all played bad yesterday, I think we needed this quick 2-0, and this was the perfect result.” ardiis said.
DRX and NRG have played each other in several best-of-fives in the past, with the latest coming in 2022 when NRG also emerged victorious at the Champions Instabul, an incident that meant DRX was forced into the lower bracket at Masters Copenhagen and Masters Reykjavík.
DRX picked Pearl as their map pick, and both teams went toe to toe as NRG didn’t show any sign of weakness on Pearl at all. DRX also showed energy for a team that had a rough Saturday after losing to Paper Rex. Perhaps the biggest observation of the game has to be the way the DRX players worked for each other in a synergy that hid all individual weaknesses of any of their players.
DRX eventually ended the first half 8-4 as they took the half, but NRG had the momentum in the second half as Sam “s0m” Oh combined with ardiss to make NRG enjoy a favorable result. NRG will play their next opponents on Tuesday, June 20.
Daniel Ademiju Idowu
