The VALORANT Champions Tour has moved past the Challengers 1 stage, and some teams hoping to qualify for Masters 2 in Iceland are still hunting for their golden roster. Most orgs have locked their squads in for Stage 2, but others are still moving pieces or finally signing to organizations with an offline event experience in mind.
Here are some of the more important VCT Stage 2 roster changes ahead of the most crucial juncture of the year so far for VALORANT teams.
Fnatic add new members
In a whirlwind cycle last week, Fnatic benched two of their starting players and signed two new players on April 8. Nikita “Derke” Sirmitev and Martin “MAGNUM” Penkov debuted for the roster at Challengers 2. The team has already qualified for the main event, and they are in contention for a spot in the Challengers finals.
Before Fnatic, Derke was the lone Swede on the Russian squad CrowСrowd. The duelist played most recently in the Commonwealth of Independent States Challengers 1 final. His team lost, but Derke notched 93 kills in the five-game series on Jett and Raze. MAGNUM, on the other hand, has bounced around a few squads before landing on Fnatic. He primarily plays sentinels, but he has piloted Skye in Fnatic’s recent matches.
Of the roster changes in Europe for VCT Stage 2, these two may be the most important as Europe only has two slots for Turkey, Europe and the CIS regions at Masters 2.
Kooky Koalas hint at future singing
The Kooky Koalas, formerly DaHoonkaBhanKoloos, are an amateur team that qualified for the last Challengers event of Stage 1. The team, captained by Kyle “ScrewFace” Jensen, went out of the tournament relatively quickly. However, they caught some eyes from fans. The team is on-par with other tier two, and even tier one, VALORANT squads despite not representing an organization.
DHBK has finally found a home. Be ready for the official announcement coming soon! pic.twitter.com/0FRpGMQdvK
— him (@KookyKoalas) April 10, 2021
The team may be on the path to representation soon as their Twitter account has posted the patented contract signing gif. The squad did miss out on Stage 2 Challengers 1, but they have another chance to qualify for Challengers Finals starting April 15.
TenZ returns to Sentinels
After a few weeks of skepticism on whether Tyson “TenZ” Ngo would continue his loan to Sentinels, he recently announced that the team has retained his services. TenZ was an instrumental part of their run to win Masters 1 and should be a factor in their attempts to qualify for Masters 2.
Round 2 😎 https://t.co/jkQ3UFwAZ0 pic.twitter.com/cZSaVwhGPM
— TenZ (@TenZOfficial) April 12, 2021
Sentinels failed to qualify for Stage 2 Challengers 1, and now they have one more shot to make it to Masters 2. The team was defeated by Built By Gamers and will have to battle through a qualification pool full of other Masters 1 attendees.
