Viewer Guide: Valorant Challengers League Malaysia and Singapore edition

Tournament Information

The Southeast Asia region has no shortage when it comes to up-and-coming talents. Much like North America, one could even say there are far too many talents. One such region is the Malaysian/Singaporean region, which has supplied enough talent to fuel their own league. The league will begin competing on the 2nd of Feb, running until the 26th, concluding the first split. It consists of 8 teams battling, with the top 6 qualifying for Playoffs (Mar 8th-12th). Organized by The Gaming Company, a total prize pool in the amount of RM 100,000, roughly equating to 23,000 USD, has been designated.

The league will be played in a single Round Robin fashion, with each team getting to play every other. All matches are set to be Bo3s. Placements wise, the top 4 teams receive the benefit of beginning in the upper bracket of the Playoffs, while the 5th and 6th place team will have to fight in the lower bracket. The two teams that place the lowest will be eliminated from contention in Playoffs.

The teams as listed in the league are as followed:

• Bleed Esports
• Enigma Gaming
• Todak
• X10 Esports
• Louvre
• Team Path
• Hey! Yakiniku
• Kizuna Esports

Kizuna Esports, Louvre, Team Path and Hey! Yakiniku all qualified through the Open Qualifiers that took place between Jan 5th-8th. 16 teams played in the qualifiers.

Notable Teams

3 organizations instantly sticks out in this league as ‘clear favorites’, that being Bleed Esports, X10 Esports, and potentially Enigma Gaming. Bleed Esports is easily the top contender in this league, with the potential chops and talent to challenge a partnered team even potentially. A consistent top 3 organization since 2022 in the SEA region, they, XERXIA and Paper Rex formed the pinnacle of top SEA talent. Whilst Paper Rex succeeded in achieving partnership and the XERXIA core has since migrated to Talon, this leaves Bleed as the sole successor to not yet ascend.

Bleed Esports has retained their core of three, and added Natchaphon “sScary” Matarat from Xerxia, adding one of the best Asian controllers to their arsenal. Rookie Tyler “juicy” James has also been called up from Bleed Academy and made his LAN debut at the Valorant India Invitational. There, he looked like one of the best and most promising talents to come into 2023 from SEA. At the recent Valorant India Invitational, Bleed placed 3rd-4th, narrowly falling to Team Heretics.

X10 has since migrated to Singapore from their days in Thailand. Now sporting a brand new roster, they are largely untested, however, the X10 brand has seen fame since 2021, when their all Thai squad made it to the first Valorant LAN at Masters: Reykjavik. X10 definitely have the resources to mold their players, and it will come down to the players themselves.

Finally, we have Enigma Gaming. Enigma most recently played in the Valorant India Invitational (most notably), however, have since elected to scrap their India-based roster in favor of Singapore. Their new official roster is yet to be announced, however, they have shown a keen eye for talent, as their roster showed decent promise during the invitational.

Final tidbits

A team to also keep an eye potentially on would be Hey! Yakiniku. A notable name on their roster is Jorell “Retla” Teo, formerly of Bleed Esports. Matches will be streamed on Twitch (TBD).

Image credit: Valorant Challengers/ Riot Games