Knights Arena VALORAMPAGE: Gen.G, NRG, Luminosity Gaming & Ghost Gaming preview

As you might be aware after reading THESPIKE.GG’s previous articles, the countdown to Knights Arena VALORAMPAGE has begun. It has been less than a week since the world entered 2022, and we already have major Valorant tournaments on the horizon. It shows how much the esports scene has developed over the last two years.

There will be a total of 8 groups with 4 teams apiece. Sixteen of the thirty-two teams have secured a spot through invitation, while the rest will participate in an open-qualifier held between 13th-16th of January. We’ve covered the format of the tournament in detail, as well as a look at the first four teams of the tournament. This article will act as a sequel providing insight on the following teams invited to the tournament:

• Gen.G
• NRG
• Luminosity Gaming
• Ghost Gaming

Gen.G Esports was amongst the first few organizations to sign a Valorant roster. Throughout 2020, they competed in several regional tournaments and were able to maintain a name for themselves in the nascent esports scene. However, their success in 2021 was fairly limited with only a couple of notable performances in VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - North America - Challengers 3 and VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - North America Masters. It is worth mentioning that they still managed to place amongst the top 10 teams in the overall NA Circuit Points Standings, which is an achievement truly worthy of praise. They could’ve made VCT 2021 - VALORANT Champions 2021 but Cloud9 managed to eliminate them after a close battle in the Lower Bracket of VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier. Gen.G recently brought on Emir "rhyme" Muminovic, who will likely play a duelist role considering that Raze is his main agent. His stats in the last three months have been 1.06 rating, 209.90 ACS and 138 ADR, but his latest tournament participation came to an early end.

NRG Esports were comparatively more hesitant to enter the scene, but still managed to do so before the start of 2021. Since an entirely new roster came together within a matter of months, their performance in the First Strike tournaments wasn’t noteworthy. They, however, managed to sneak a victory in an NSG tournament before they year ended. 2021 wasn’t any better either, as they couldn’t make VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - North America Masters, the only regional Masters event of the year. Stage 2 witnessed a little improvement with a 3rd place in VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - North America - Challengers 2 and 5th-6th in VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - North America - Challengers Finals. After that, the roster faced fluctuations and they held back from any tournament participations till Stage 3 of VCT started, which bore worse fate than proceeding stages as they couldn’t make it past the qualifiers on both attempts and didn’t rank top 10 in VCT circuit points either as noted by their absence from VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier. That being said, it’s worth noting that they have managed top 4 finishes in their past four tournaments so there’s still hope for the team’s future performances.

Although Luminosity Gaming was one of the top 10 teams in the NA region according to circuit points, they had an average VCT run at best with failure to qualify for Stage 2 Challengers, and no international event participations. Both Stage 1 and Stage 3 saw some unexpected performances, including the 3rd place at VCT 2021 - Stage 1 - North America - Challengers 3 and months later in VCT 2021 - Stage 3 - North America - Challengers 2. Their run at VCT 2021 - North America Last Chance Qualifier was cut short in the first round itself in the Upper Bracket by XSET and in Lower Bracket by Gen.G. The team has had a lot of roster changes throughout the year, but more recently it was Alex "aproto" Protopapas, who was declared inactive and allowed to search for options. It seems that their current roster holds a great potential as evident by their latest victory at the in NSG 2022 Winter Championship - Online Open 12.

Amongst all the four teams mentioned in this article, Ghost Gaming has been the latest to join the scene, and if exact dates are to be considered, it hasn’t even been a year since they signed the Project ! roster. However, they couldn’t keep up with other major teams on the scene, especially due to the numerous changes the roster faced in the initial months. Tournament after tournament, they struggled to find momentum and their VCT run was practically non-existent with no Challenger qualifications in either of the three stages.

In the sea of 5th-8th and 9th-16th placements, was only 1 first place finish in Pittsburgh Knights Monthly Gauntlet 2021 - July: Campfire Chaos and two second places in NSG tournaments. A surprising aspect surrounding their potential participation in the Knights Arena VALORAMPAGE is the lack of a complete roster after releasing Danny "HUYNH" Huynh and Dajon "chase" Lopez only a few days ago. There is a good chance that they are trialing players for replacement and the event will serve as a the perfect training ground for future members of the roster.

Make sure to stay tuned to the THESPIKE.GG, as we will take a deeper look at the latter half of the invited teams in upcoming articles.