First Strike in Latin America set to commence

The Latin American region is one of the last First Strike events to begin, and features two separate tournaments, one for Latin America North, one for the South, similar to Riot Games’ approach to League of Legends. Riot announced the tournaments with a blog post and promotional video, announcing the prize pool and some basic details of the overall event. The tournaments are set to start on November 23rd, 2020, with the open brackets.

The tournaments are split into three stages, the open bracket, the closed bracket before concluding with the Final stage. The format mirrors that of the other major regions - 128 teams enter the open bracket, eight teams move to the group stage, with the top four teams advancing after a round robin. The final stage moves to best-of-five, where teams compete for the lion’s share of $15,000 USD in each region.

Some early favorites should be LAZER, who took home top honors in Valorant Versus Final - N as well as Australs who took home the Southern title. It’s unclear how VALORANT Versus success will translate to First Strike, with teams such as Estral Esports and INFINITY looking for revenge for their upset defeats in the respective grand finals.

The tournament is organized by GGTech, and looks to be the fastest tournament of any region: the open bracket opens on November 23rd, 2020, and the final stage ends less than two weeks later, on December 6th, 2020. It should also be noted that Brazil is not included in this event, as the country was given its own First Strike event, First Strike Brazil Regional Final.

Who do you think will take the top prize in Latin America, which teams do you expect to go on surprise runs? Will the Latin American meta feature anything wildly different to the rest of the world, or will it be more of the same? Let us know what you think about Latin American First Strike down below.