2nd May 2023

Challengers EMEA 2023 Week 5 Recap - Fnatic dominates and Karmine Corp wins

At the end of this new week of the EMEA Challengers 2023, Fnatic continues its dominance in the EMEA League with another win over FUT Esports. With only one map conceded in five games, the team still leads the regular season standings. On its side, Karmine Corp found itself in one of the most anticipated matches of the tournament, a match that opposed it to KOI. The French won this match that was not to be lost! The Blue Wall structure intends to come back in the playoffs race.

Team Liquid defeats Giants Gaming

Giants Gaming and Team Liquid opened the hostilities on Wednesday 26th April. These two teams had never met before in these Challengers. Both teams were determined to stay at the top of the regular season standings and gave it their all to win.

After more than an hour and twelve minutes of play, Giants emerged victorious from the first map, Ascent, with a close score of 13 to 11. The two teams then faced each other on Icebox, as electric and intense as the last one. Once again, it took 24 rounds to decide between them. Driven by Sayf and his Jett, which has a monstrous KDA at the end of the game (28/12/6), Team Liquid won 13 to 11. It all came down to Lotus, the third and final map of the evening. Once again, the two teams exchanged wins and losses and played no less than 23 rounds. This time, Team Liquid took the lead over its opponent thanks to the efficiency of nAts and earned his second point by winning the 13 to 10.

Team Heretics stuck in a vicious circle

Since the beginning of the Challengers, some teams have been flying high in the competition, while others have struggled to prove themselves. Despite their efforts, keloqz, mixell, zeek, Boo and Avova, Team Heretics players have only won one match in five games. This new week was therefore an opportunity for them to get out of this bad situation, but BBL Esports, in the same situation, decided otherwise.

Haven, the first map of the match was the scene of a long battle: more than an hour and a half of play and 26 rounds played. BBL Esports first took the lead, winning their Attack side, before conceding the Defence side. They finally won 14-12 at the end of overtime.

The ten players then moved on to Lotus, and here again, the match lasted just over an hour and ten minutes. At the end of the first period, it was a perfect tie. BBL Esports took the lead for a while, but Team Heretics didn't let them get away with it. With six wins in a row, Keloqz and his allies won the map 13 to 10 and then set the record straight.

At this level of the competition, teams need to be resistant and able to handle the pressure that comes with this kind of match. Despite the loss, BBL Esports stayed in the game and simply crushed their opponents on Icebox. Extremely effective in defence, they managed to defuse the Spike time and time again and conceded only one out of twelve sets. The map quickly came to an end with a final score of 13 to 2 in favour of BBL.

Victory of France over Spain!

Other teams in difficulty in these Challengers include Karmine Corp and the Spanish structure KOI. The two rival teams met in an epic and tense face-off, which ended in a 2-1 victory for the French. For more information on this memorable match, you can read our complete summary.

With this second win, Karmine Corp has regained hope and moved up to seventh place in the regular season standings, tied with BBL Esports. According to ScreaM, this is only the beginning, so we're looking forward to seeing how the roster fares against FUT Esports this week.

The invincible Fnatic

Unbeaten in four games, Alfajer, Chronicles, Derke, Boaster and Leo did not intend to stop there. If FUT Esports hoped to take Icebox for a while, it quickly fell apart when Fnatic switched to Attack. Thanks to the excellent performance of Alfajer and his Killjoy and the incredible ace of Chronicle in Round 18, Fnatic did not lose any of the six rounds played, and thus secured the map without much difficulty. Final score: 13 to 5. On Lotus, FUT Esports once again cast doubt on the map in the first half, but Fnatic was uncompromising and efficient in the second half and finally won the map 13 to 5.

Team Vitality loses to Natus Vincere

The week ended with the meeting between Vitality and NaVi. The latter won Split and Fracture, but the bees did not lose out by any means. The match was very close and each map ended in a 13-10.

That evening, they simply had to deal with cNed and SUYGETSU, particularly good. The former had an overall GBA of 270 and a KDA of 49/31/9 with Jett and Yoru, and the latter had 35 eliminations and 11 assists in the late game, with only 25 deaths.

Team Vitality will have another chance to shine very soon, as the team will face Fnatic on Wednesday 3rd May, at 8pm. If you want to follow the match live, go to the Twitch channel of the French Valorant league.