Evil Geniuses and Fnatic will face one another in the upper bracket finals of the VCT Masters Tokyo.
It was a day of bangers in the upper bracket semifinals of the VCT Masters Tokyo where all three major regions were in action: the Americas, Pacific, and EMEA. And it was a day of clean sweeps as both the Americas and EMEA came out on top with Evil Geniuses and Fnatic set to face one another in the upper bracket final.
This came after EG sent Team Liquid to the lower bracket with a dominant 2-0 display. While at the other side of the bracket, Fnatic also made light work of Paper Rex to set up an upper-bracket final showdown. While Fnatic is still undefeated in the playoffs, EG is still undefeated in the entire tournament, having started from the group stage.
As for PRX and Liquid, they will be playing against EDward Gaming and NRG respectively in the lower bracket quarterfinals. This came after EDG sent the reigning world champions packing while NRG eliminated one of the tournament darlings, DRX.
Evil GeniusesWith EG coming from the group stage, they are the only team left that has played the most games in the tournament without any losses. And heading into the series with the VCT EMEA League champions, many expected this to be a close fight between Liquid and EG. However, it was the North American boys in blue that came out on top after a near-perfect run in the first map on Fracture.
EG took the game in just 42 minutes, dropping only two rounds in the entire match with the likes of Kelden "Boostio" Pupello with 18 kills, the most of anyone in the first game. Boostio also had a rating of 1.55 and an average combat score (ACS) of 347. However, Liquid did put up a much better fight in game two on Haven, which was also their pick but it was still not enough.
Both halves in the second match were fairly close with EG having led 7-5 in the first half before going on to win 6-5 in the second. And while Boostio was the top-performing member on EG once more, Ayaz "nAts" Akhmetshin deserves some recognition for how he put his team on his back through that series.
FnaticAnd in the second series of the day that went completely one-sided, VCT LOCK//IN champions Fnatic saw to it that Paper Rex would have to take the long route to the grand finals. PRX is known for suffering some heavy defeats in its time and this was one of them, going 12-0 in the first half on Lotus against Fnatic. While PRX did manage to win five in a row in the second half, they could not do much to prevent Fnatic from winning just one more round to head to the second map.
JingYing "Jinggg" Lim was also PRX's best-performing player in the first game, particularly in the second half with an ACS of 668 and 16 kills to boot. However, Nikita "Derke" Sirmitev and the rest of Fnatic proved to be too much. Even Timofey "Chronicle" Khromov got in on the action in the second game on Bind by being racking up the most kills amongst both teams with an ACS of 300 and a rating of 1.41.
And while PRX did have a better second game against Fnatic, they still got outplayed hard with the EMEA squad having claimed nine of the first 12 rounds, which includes two four-round win streaks. With Fnatic needing just four more wins to secure the series, they would go on to win three in a row to start the second half before PRX responded with three rounds of their own. Sadly, the 20th round proved to be the killing blow for PRX.
