XSET win Nerd Street Champs Philly LAN

The first major VALORANT LAN tournament of this summer’s Nerd Street Champs series took place this past weekend. XSET came out on top among a field of eight teams that competed at The Block in Philadelphia. The win at this LAN means XSET have qualified for the $50,000 finals on Aug. 17.

XSET beat Drexel University and Cloud9 Academy during the group stage of the event. XSET cruised in their win over the collegiate teams 13-1, 13-2. Against the academy team, XSET dropped the first map 13-11 before bouncing back to win the next two 13-7, 13-6.

In the playoffs, XSET beat Oxygen Academy 2-0 with two easy map wins: 13-2, 13-3. In the final, XSET won a rematch with C9 Academy 2-0. Although they won the first map 13-5, Map 2 was much more competitive as C9 Academy pushed the map to overtime, and XSET ultimately won it 14-12.

Zachary "zekken" Patrone and Matthew "Cryocells" Panganiban had the highest average combat score (ACS) of any players at the tournament. Zekken led all players with an ACS of 301.9 and a K/D of 1.9. Cryocells had an ACS of 269.7 and a K/D of 1.43. Cryocells did his damage mostly on Jett or Chamber, two agents commonly used by players with the highest ACS and K/D. Zekken, however, played some Jett, but most of his rounds were on KAY/O or Raze.

XSET’s win was not surprising as they were far and away the highest ranked team at the tournament (No. 4 in NA by VLR.gg) and the only one of the teams to have competed in the VALORANT Champions Tour’s Stage 1 Challengers main event. With XSET consistently finishing near the top of major VCT tournaments but failing to qualify for any international LANs, this weekend’s LAN experience was undoubtedly valuable for the young team.

Following this weekend’s LAN, there are 10 more Nerd Street VALORANT LAN tournaments scheduled and 14 more online open qualifiers for the summer series. A few of the bigger LANs will grant autoqualification for the finals in August. Otherwise, teams will accrue leaderboard points across the online opens and the LANs to try to qualify for the finals. There will also be a Last Chance Qualifier that will grant eight teams a spot in the finals.

Learn more about Nerd Street Champs for VALORANT!

An unsigned team named Nearest Airport won the first Nerd Street Champs online open, and the next online open is taking place this week. Nerd Street’s next VALORANT LAN takes place this weekend in Brentwood, Missouri.

Lead photo credit: XSET via Twitter