ShahZaM reflects on reaching Masters final, says Sentinels’ teamwork has been ‘underestimated’

May 29, 2021

by Mitch Reames

With Friday’s matches at VALORANT’s Masters: Reykjavík wrapped up, one team remains unbeaten in the tournament. North America’s Sentinels entered the event as the best team from NA, and over the last week, they have shown themselves to be the best team in the world -- at least for now.

After beating Korea’s NUTURN Gaming in the upper bracket final, Sentinels move on to the grand final as three teams battle it out in the lower bracket to become their opponent.

“Right now, we are playing really well. Our communication is good, our game plans are good,” said Shahzeb “ShahZaM” Khan, Sentinel's IGL after the match. “We’ve learned from losses in the past, but at this tournament we are focusing on things that are going right. If anything goes wrong, then we can reevaluate it.”

So far, there hasn’t been much need for evaluation. All three of Sentinels’ games were sweeps with the score margin more in Sentinels favor in each subsequent series. Fnatic put up the biggest fight losing 13-10 and 13-11 in Sentinels’ first match. Brazil’s No. 1 overall seed Team Vikings came next, and Sentinels took them down 13-7, 13-6. The series against NUTURN was the most lopsided yet with Sentinels winning 13-5, 13-4.

“Playing against Sentinels, I thought many of the tactics and strategies that we used in Korea would work well against them,” said Kang “Solo” Keun-chul, NUTURN Gaming’s IGL.

Clearly Sentinels disagreed. Despite the decisive victory, NUTURN Gaming still doesn’t see Sentinels as particularly tactical in style.

“Sentinels are not a team that has a really compact team comp and have strategies based off that agent comp,” said Kim “Lakia” Jong-min, who was the standout performer in NUTURN’s win over V1 on Thursday. “As opposed to that, I think they are based on their mechanical skills. In today’s game, I think our one-on-ones were a little behind.”

This debate between tactical and mechanics, between running sets and adaptability, has been a throughline of VALORANT’s first international tournament. For Sentinels, who are undoubtedly mechanically skilled, they still see the team’s teamwork as being overlooked.

“We definitely think our teamwork is being underestimated by other teams,” ShahZaM said. “We knew that their mind revolved around the Breach utility. Our game plan was to let the Sova utility lead and bait it out. We’re not getting caught out by the Breach utility, we aren’t getting caught in showers, we’re not going to let them play their game. We’re aware of their plays, so we played around it. That’s teamwork in itself. People need to start recognizing the things we are doing even if it doesn’t necessarily look as cool as what other teams are doing.”

To reach the game against Sentinels, NUTURN Gaming had to beat Brazil’s Sharks Esports and Version1. During those matches, some clear patterns emerged as each game the team struggled a lot during the first map of each series which happened to be Haven. Against Sharks, who only won this one map during their time in the tournament, Nuturn lost 13-5. Against V1, they lost the map 13-3. Sentinels didn’t start with Haven but took Nuturn down on it in the second map 13-4. For a team locked into a top three finish, Haven clearly represents a massive question mark for NUTURN.

“Haven is actually a map we are quite strong on when we play in Korea,” Solo said. “But, as you can see, it’s been a struggle for us in this tournament. I think we may need to change up the team comp or set up some new strategies going into the next game.”

Photo credit: Riot Games

The question going into this matchup was does NUTURN Gaming start slow or do they struggle on Haven? The answer might be both. NUTURN’s Bind and Ascent have looked phenomenal at times including an amazing comeback against V1 on Ascent.

Bind has been a popular veto pick for teams facing NUTURN as the team features an 81% win rate on the map. Sentinels chose not to ban it and clearly made the right choice as NUTURN gave them little trouble. That might have been because it was also the first map played.

“We use the first map to try to get all players warmed up and into the game,” Solo said. “It’s not like we are intentionally throwing or we’re not trying to win though. But we do use a lot of rounds to learn more about the opponent.”

The strategy worked against V1, although both of NUTURN’s map wins came down to OT. Against Sentinels, the team started slow and stayed slow through both Bind and Haven.

“We knew they were pretty much undefeated on Bind back [in Korea],” ShahZaM said. “So, they weren’t going to switch up much of what they do. They’re running older meta comps -- no Astra, no Viper -- so we figured if we let Bind through, it’s still a good map for us. We felt like we could prep for them knowing they weren’t going to change a whole lot and we had the advantage of using agents we felt are stronger on the map.”

Breach has been a popular agent pick for some teams but has largely fallen out of the top tier North American meta.

“We expected the comp for Haven to work well where we combine two duelists and Breach, combining Jett and Breach, but it hasn’t worked well here,” Solo explained. “It’s something we expected Sentinels to have difficulty in dealing with as they focus more on personal mechanics as opposed to teamwork. So we assumed it would work well, but it's something that is obviously not working well throughout the tournament.”

NUTURN Gaming’s next match will be against the winner of Fnatic and Team Liquid on Saturday. With three straight matches where Haven was a consistent problem, look for NUTURN Gaming to switch up the comp for that game. If they don’t, both TL and Fnatic will have plenty of footage for how to beat it.

Sentinels get to relax and do research tomorrow as the other three teams battle it out to be their opponent at the grand finals on Sunday at 1 p.m. ET. Teamwork or not, they’re the team to beat.

Lead image credit: Riot Games