Raise Your Edge Rise Up
Life is full of surprises, and EU VALORANT just adds a little extra spice to it. Raise Your Edge have shown what it takes to make it all the way to Masters, and how! To get there, these underdogs had to beat a couple of tough opponents. Perhaps even more impressive than beating Team Vitality 2-0 in the Open Qualifier for Challengers 3, is their win over Rix.GG to get to the finals of that event.
Raise Your Edge may be a British organisation - none of the players are. The roster is well-mixed, with nationalities from all over Europe. Mehmet Yagiz "cNed" Ipek, whose highlight plays have carried his name around, brings along the whole country of Turkey to support him. His fans are as loyal as you’ll ever see. They were all eager to watch Raise Your Edge compete in the last few rounds of Challengers 3.
Just two series away from qualifying for Masters, and no more second chances, all teams knew that everything was on the line. On Friday, it was time for Raise Your Edge and Rix.GG to battle it out. It was already an interesting sight to see these two teams there. Raise Your Edge had eliminated Team Vitality, and Rix.GG had cut Team Liquid’s run short. Even though both teams are underdogs in their own right, Rix.GG was expected to move on to fight OG Esports. But Raise Your Edge would not go down without a fight. In fact, they wouldn’t go down at all.
The first map, Bind, was picked by Rix.GG. Rix came up with an unorthodox plan: using Yoru to throw off the other team in any way possible. Yoru excels on Bind, where he can fake a rotate by sending his footsteps through the portals. It makes anyone on the other side second guess their own rotations. But if the enemies see him actually took the portal, Yoru can also use his abilities to bait them into following through the portal. Yoru isn’t a one-trick pony. His abilities may not shine on every map, but they can be used in all kind of creative ways.
Raise Your Edge also showed up to Bind with a less common agent. They locked in Viper and Skye to help take control of the sites, instead of picking any sentinels. It’s something Fnatic have been doing as well. They’re going with something new and exciting, to get their Bind plays to the next level.
It just wasn’t enough for Raise Your Edge to take the map, but they made it close. It was a harbinger of what was to come for Rix.GG. Just like on Bind, the defenders were winning most of the rounds on Ascent. It led to an overtime, and this time, Raise Your Edge closed it out.
Haven was the deciding map, and here Raise Your Edge secured their place on top. As the sniper on Jett, cNed was doing amazing work for his team, but it was the whole team who worked together to steal the rounds away from Rix.
After their victory over Rix.GG, Raise Your Edge had to face OG Esports to drag the qualification for Masters over the line. Whether it was their confidence from the series against Rix or a poor performance from OG Esports - Raise Your Edge didn’t seem to be bothered by the OG squad. Only scoring a total of nine rounds across two maps, OG didn’t stand a chance, and had to hand Raise Your Edge the qualification spot for the upcoming Masters event.
What will happen at the Masters, remains to be seen. But whatever happens, it’s a damn impressive feat to be amongst the eight European teams that managed to qualify through all the Challenger events. In their current form, Raise Your Edge are to be feared by their fellow Masters participants.
Images via Raise Your Edge
