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Battle for Clout: FaZe Smeag All Star Weekend Tourney Recap
Big Names to Watch
Team Tarik took home the bag this weekend at the FaZe Smeag All Star Weekend Tournament. Part of the Riot OFF//SEASON series of tournaments, it was organized by Faze Clan in collaboration with Riot Games.
The Valorant esports scene is currently in the off-season, but with Riot’s introduction of the OFF//SEASON series, there is still plenty for fans to watch and pros to retain their edge. For the most part, the OFF//SEASON series sees a mix of established teams and all-star lineups compete in ‘windows of organized competition.’ The profile of the tournaments varies depending on the organizer Riot partners up with for the event, and in this case, it is a fairly big one.
FaZe Clan has made their brand ubiquitous with FPS, beginning with their early foray into the scene with COD. They would then branch out into other games, now fielding competitive teams in Fortnite, CSGO, R6 and of course, Valorant as prime examples.
And in a similar vein to other influencer/content creator centric tournaments in the OFF//SEASON series, this one featured headliner names from both the professional scene as well as top streamers. Familiar names such as Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker competed alongside names such as “PROD” and Jonas “AverageJonas” Navarsete for a prize pool of 50,000 USD.
FaZe Clan player Andrej “babybay” Francisty and Mimi “aEvilcat” Wermcrantz commented on all the matches.
[twitter url="https://twitter.com/FaZeClan/status/1588654731488296961"]
Assembling all the Clout
Featuring a total of eight teams, each team’s captain selected their members from the pool of talent, resulting in the following teams:
- Team s0m
- Team Shanks
- Team brax
- Team Stewie2k
- Team tarik
- Team PROD
- Team ShahZaM
- Team AverageJonas
Team s0m
- s0m
- eeiu
- Subroza
- NiSMO
- corey
Team Shanks
- Shanks
- Marved
- poised
- tex
- flyuh
Team brax
- brax
- leaf
- Derrek
- Stellar
- AYRIN
Team Stewie2k
- Stewie2k
- zekken
- Ethan
- valyn
- bunny bee
Team tarik
- tarik
- jawgemo
- bang
- neT
- Zander
Team PROD
- PROD
- Xeppaa
- Zellsis
- Bdog
- keenc
Team ShahZaM
- ShahZaM
- yay
- dapr
- trent
- sarah
Team AverageJonas
- AverageJonas
- Cryocells
- Vanity
- Bcj
- florescent
Format
The tournament was held in a double-elimination bracket with Bo1s for all matches up until the finals, where a Bo3 format was employed.
Dark Horse
While many expected popular teams such as Team brax or Team PROD to forge ahead of the competition through sheer stacked talent, it would ultimately be dark horse candidate Team tarik to be the breakout team.
Considering that their team consisted of only one partnership player in Sean “bang” Bezerra, the team did extremely well in their Upper Bracket run, not losing a single map throughout the tournament.
The team’s performance does lend some credence to the idea that should he like to, team captain Tarik “tarik” Celik can still compete with the highest in NA. Moreover, with the expert shotcalling of Michael “neT” Bernet, the team of misfits took massive scalps in Team Stewie2k, Team brax, and Team AverageJonas before a rematch in the finals against Team brax.
Keeping in mind that the tournament consisted of a majority of former and current professionals, the skill level offered at the tournament was at a high level and the matches were high quality.
Team Tarik’s win resulted in the team taking home the lion’s share of the pot at 25,000 USD.
[twitter url="https://twitter.com/FaZeClan/status/1589455468002701312"]
Image credit: FaZe Clan
