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Valorant Champions Tour (VCT) 2022 EMEA Stage 1 Challengers 1 Day 3 witnessed a massive dominance of Guild Esports over BBL, who defeated the latter by a score of 2-0.
Both teams battled in a best-of-three map series, where the score stood as 6-18 in Breeze and 9-13 in Haven. They will now face others from Group B during Week 2 of the Valorant Champions Tour 2022 EMEA Stage 1 Challengers 1. The Guild will compete against Acend and BBL Esport will compete with Fnatic next.
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Before the Valorant Champions Tour 2022 kicked off, Guild Esports made some major roster shuffles and brought in three new players to the team. Russell "Russ" Mendes is one of the newly added players to the Guild's Valorant roster. Russ was previously a part of TENSTAR but got benched on November 15, 2021.
Guild Esports' Russ on his experience with the newly joined team and facing the Valorant Champions of 2021, Acend
After defeating BBL Esports on Day 3 of the Valorant Champions Tour 2022 EMEA Stage 1 Challengers 1, Pratiti Dhang of Sportskeeda Esports talked to Guild Esports' Valorant professional player Russ about the match and facing the defending Valorant Champions, Acend next. He also revealed his experience with the team and goals for VCT 2022.
Here's an excerpt of the conversation.
Q: Congratulations on the win against BBL Esports! Moving forward into the Valorant Champions Tour 2022, what are some of the main goals that you and the team have set for themselves?
Guild Russ: Well, it's just one goal at a time right now. So the main goal right now is qualifying for the Masters, so that's your main goal. And whatever happens after that happens, I guess.
Q: EMEA, as a region, has set high competitive standards this year. With some of the top teams fighting in the Group Stage, how confident are you getting into the playoffs?
Guild Russ: I'm really confident because I feel like all the other teams have kind of dropped off a bit, and there's like a little gap now. You can tell who's good in Europe and who's not anymore. So, yeah, I think I'm pretty confident.
Q: What are your thoughts on the other teams in your group like Fnatic, G2 Esports, and the defending Valorant Champions from last year, Acend?
Guild Russ: I think our group is a lot easier than the other group. I'd say for us because the other group has teams like BIG and LDN UTD. Those teams can upset you a lot. I'd rather not play against those teams. So I'm happy with our group and I feel like it's a lot easier than the other one.
Q: Talking about today’s match, in the second map, Haven, we saw Guild losing some crucial rounds in the end. This kept you guys on the edge of victory for a long time.
What was resisting the team for so long to turn the win the last round? Also, how did the team finally adapt and win the map in the end?
Guild Russ: What I think really happened is they just started playing randomly. Like they stopped caring because they were losing so much. So it kind of caught us a bit.
The thing is they were just over-rotating a lot and we had the reads on them, but it was like they were also hitting some of the right shots, so that's pretty much it. To be honest, it wasn't anything special, just an end game kind of thing, because when they lose in, people like to push. When they killed us, they were running down mid and all that stuff. So, yeah, it was normal.
Q: Leo “Leo” Jannesson picked up Chamber today in Haven. Very few players are adapting to the new agents real quick. How did the team prepare and adapt to the new agent composition for Valorant tournaments?
Guild Russ: It was pretty easy because Leo is a very smart player and adding Chamber to our comp is really easy just because everyone else can play whatever agents like the coach want us to play and just like we have Nikita “trexx” Cherednichenko as well on the server and he is really good with the maps in the server. He also fits in really easily on this map as well. So putting it in Chamber was not an issue for us.
Q: Russ, you have been a recent addition to the team. You joined Guild Esports on January 7, 2022. How did you build that synergy with your other teammates in a short span and how has the overall experience been?
Guild Russ: It’s exciting for me as a person. I think it's just really easy getting to know people. So joining this team, I already played with safe in the past, like in CS: GO And like everyone else in the team, I felt like. we just gel in really well, like straight away. So I feel like there are no issues or anything with us.
Q: Before joining Guild Esports, you were a part of TENSTAR's Valorant roster. What are some of the differences you have spotted between the two teams?
Guild Russ: The major difference definitely has to be the firepower and also the coaching side of the game. I feel like we have a lot more, we have a coaching staff but we also have staff that work for the Guild as well and they play a big part in adding another couple of percentages to how well you play. So we have psychologists, nutritionists, etc. They look after us really well.
Q: Next Guild will face Acend next in Week 2 of Valorant Champions Tour 2022 EMEA Stage 1 Challengers 1. How prepared are you to face last year's Valorant Champions?
Guild Russ: We take every game the same so we're going to be prepared like the same way we did for BBL. So even though they're Champions, I'd think it will be an issue for us so yeah.
