AUTHOR: CHRIS "BEARLIGHT" LEE / @BEARLIGHTCASTS
Stay Plugged In hosted Week 29 of it's Road to Radiant weekly tournament this past Wednesday. As we push toward an October month filled with LIVE Stay Plugged In LAN Valorant action in three of it's five weekends, recruits are able to look at the weekly event as a place to formulate new rosters, or to get some additional practice in before the bigger events take place. In this week's Road to Radiant BearLight breakdown, we highlight two of the most impactful matches of the tournament, and crown a champion and MVP of the event. Check it out these players in action.
SEMIFINALS - KITTEN AIMERS 13, PHANTOMS 7
The Phantoms have been on the brink of making the Finals in quite a few of our tournaments this Summer, and their chance would come this week against a team we haven't seen too much yet in the Stay Plugged In circuit. You better believe we will be hearing from them more often. Senior duelist main / true-flex AMIR had a masterful performance on this map as Chamber. He finished with a 23/14/3 KDA and the top econ rating, likely indicating that his use of Chamber utility (Headhunter and Tour de Force specifically) was on point. Another duelist senior on Kitten Aimers, SINNR, also showed a clear fragging ability, putting up a 19/13/2 KDA right behind Amir. Things may have been different for Phantoms had the team avoided the zero-duelist composition in this situation. Although Chamber was used as a duelist here, their team couldn't find any answers in their fights. Unfortunately for them, the whole roster would slide below 1.0 on the KD ratio scale and drop to Kitten Aimers (7-13).
FINALS - KITTEN AIMERS 13, JITTERBUGS (2.0) 4
Even for pretty regular champions, sometimes it's just not their week. Jitterbugs 2.0 were fresh off of their Week 28 Championship with this exact same roster. They've been pretty great at the map Ascent this month. I could say that about SMRTY dating back to January. A majority of his numerous highlights have come at Ascent. This week, however, would not be about the Jitterbugs, but instead about the newcomers who came into the Finals with a full head of steam.
Kitten Aimers picked apart their opponents in the Finals this week, and it all started through their targeting of Omen and KAY/O early in rounds. A true Radiant mindset remembers the fundamentals too. Eliminate opponent flashes and smokes at Ascent and have your way with map control. The tough part of that concept is finding the trends of those two agents by gathering consistent and useful intel. Good thing their senior initiator EXPMOE was absolutely popping off on Sova. The Recon Bolt and Hunter's Fury allowed the team to locate and dissect their counterparts to create the matchups they wanted later in rounds. Also noteworthy is the fact that the final ACS of the top two Kitten Aimers from the Semifinals ended up being the bottom two here in the Finals, and they still pulled off a big win against a top-tier team. Their roster depth lead to the (13-4) win, earning CELO, AMIR, SINNR, CQREFUL, and EXPMOE their first Road to Radiant title!
Congratulations to Kitten Aimers for their title, and to EXPMOE who earned MVP rights thanks to the 20/7/7 KDA and masterful intel gathering in the Finals match. As an initiator, ExpMoe finished the tournament with a 3.188 KDA Ratio. What a huge impact ExpMoe could make on a college team with that type of versatility.
Stay Plugged In is coming to you live and in-person, with three LANs for Valorant in the month of October, starting with the JCC Campus Series LAN kicking off next Saturday, October 1st. Visit our events page to find the details and registration page for all three events. If you can't make it to any, or if you find time in between events, registration for the upcoming Road to Radiant brackets can be found on the events page as well. We hope to see you at one of our events soon.