It took them so long.

XSET XSET Inactive are a team who are historically known for finishing on the cusp of qualifying for big tournaments. They finished fourth in 2021's last two events — Stage 3: Challengers Playoffs and the NA LCQ. Although they would have needed two more wins had XSET won against Cloud9 Cloud9 North America Rank #7 Xeppaa Erick Bach v1c Victor Truong mitch Mitch Semago moose Kaleb Jayne OXY Francis Hoang in the lower bracket of the LCQ, their Stage 3 loss against Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker was the closest they had ever been to an international LAN.

“It sucks sometimes getting so close to qualifying to these international events but just being usually just one loss or two losses away from qualifying. We're always right there,” coach SyykoNT said. “But on the flipside of things, I'm a very glass half-full guy. We are the most consistent team in North America outside of OpTic. We're the only team in our region to qualify for every Challengers event first try and we're always in that top four conversation.”

Syyko has been with XSET ever since they signed Pretty Boyz Pretty Boyz Inactive PureR Bryce Lovell AYRIN Jordan He Brando Brandon Parker thwifo Zander Kim HIA Eric Boggs in October 2020. Since then, the team has changed drastically and only AYRIN remains from the original roster. In that time, he has built a team with strong fundamentals that has only finished outside the top four in VCT events twice - Stage 1: Masters and Stage 2: Challengers Finals.

“The way I like to look at it is [that] we're a very strong team, we always have been and while other teams are fluctuating up and down, we've always stayed up there at the top level,” he said. “For us to continue to be up there for so long I think is impressive, and I'm really happy that we're finally pushing through that next level and hopefully we can stay up here at the top consistently as well.”

Syyko at the NA LCQ Syyko has been with XSET through thick and thin. (Photo: Don Muir)

XSET's bittersweet finish to 2021 didn't translate into drastic changes within the team. Instead, they made one simple move: the team signed SoaR SoaR Inactive epathy Ngawang Chonjor fiziq Lucas Blow v1c Victor Truong Trill Ashley Powell 's Cryocells for PureR , one other Pretty Boyz member. And Cryocells couldn't have come in at a better time.

Prior to 2022, Cryocells was a Jett and Sova main. But in 2022, as the competitive season kicked off, the meta slowly shifted toward adding Chamber to the kits of top Jett players known for their OP play such as himself.

“When the meta shifted away from Jett on certain maps, it happened to be complemented by a shift in meta towards Chamber in a lot of maps as well. With Cryo being such a strong OPer, it was a very natural transition for him,” Syyko noted. “To kind of be like ‘hey, you're doing great on the Jett, but we're going to be shifting away from this on maps and I wanna keep you on the OP.' I feel like he's a top OP player in our region, so being able to shift him over to the Chamber and continue to have him holding it down with the sniper rifle a lot of times has been really helpful.”

XSET's coach also pointed out that Cryocell's OPing wasn't the only factor that allowed them to thrive in this new meta. As a result of placing him on Chamber, XSET have pushed zekken to a duelist position and dephh to an initiator role. Having four other extremely flexible and skilled players to pick up any agent at a high level and in any composition has been key for XSET.

“The type of player I have built this team and roster out with over the years has been with a focus on ensuring that we don't pick up someone who is a one-trick,” Syyko continued. “I'm very aware that this game updates very quickly, you get new agents all the time, the meta shifts rapidly, and so I've been preparing for this as coach and GM by building out this roster with people who will adapt to new metas and changes really easily, just due to their depth of map pool and just depth of intellect.”

As if two back-to-back fourth-place finishes in 2021 weren't enough, XSET finished fourth in 2022's Stage 1: Challengers. But Syyko's glass half-full mentality didn't lead them to changes. It led them to preparation. He saw XSET's weakest point in Stage 1 wasn't in a player. It was in the team's inability to fully flesh out their map pool and playbook as they had wanted.

“Going into the offseason, that's something that we focused on quite a bit. I'm somebody who doesn't like to have a permaban, I like to be good on every map and I like to be ready to give teams new and exciting looks when we play them,” he went on. “We had a really intensive offseason. We practice a lot longer than most teams do, we do more scrims, more server time and we really just put in the work to become the well-rounded team that I believe we now are. It really just allowed us to kind of flesh out some of those weaknesses that we originally had.”

In short, XSET went from a team who'd get punished in vetos — like they did in 2021 — to a team who punishes others in vetos. They put themselves in the driving seat by forcing teams to play maps they're uncomfortable on.

Their Stage 2: Challengers performance was aided by several things, according to Syyko: their near-flawless run was aided by getting an easier group for them, the good adaptation and preparation for the meta changes, as well as a chaotic NA scene that saw some big-time ballers finish at the bottom of the VCT tables.

“I think it's a good mix of some rosters knowing they need to make a lot of changes and making drastic two to three member changes to try and get competitive rosters, as well as some rosters feeling like they didn't need to make roster moves and it causing them to fall off a bit,” Syyko said. “Things are constantly changing, some teams don't adapt to the meta changes as well as others. Like I was saying previously, I think that's something — we strive in an environment like that whereas other teams don't as easily.”

“I think we'll continue to see this, this has been the case not just in this previous season, but just about all seasons,” he said. “We've seen two, three, four teams that were strong in the previous season that have now fallen off. That goes back to what we were saying about being able to stay up there in that top four conversation. That's not easy to do just because of how rapidly the meta changes and how frequently teams are fluctuating up and down.”

XSET hit only a single speed bump in their group stage, losing to 100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Rank #6 zander Alexander Dituri Cryocells Matthew Panganiban eeiu Daniel Vucenovic Boostio Kelden Pupello Asuna Peter Mazuryk . In XSET's other four matches, The Guard The Guard Inactive JonahP Jonah Pulice trent Trent Cairns neT Michael Bernet valyn Jacob Batio tex Ian Botsch were the only team capable of pushing them to a map three; TSM TSM North America Rank #14 seven Johann Hernandez gMd Anthony Guimond sym Tyler Porter tdawgg Travis Regan XXiF Damion Cook , NRG Esports NRG Esports North America Rank #3 FiNESSE Pujan Mehta s0m Sam Oh Verno Andrew Maust mada Adam Pampuch Ethan Ethan Arnold and Ghost Gaming Ghost Gaming Inactive koalanoob Gianfranco Potestio NiSMO Marc-Andre Tayar aproto Alex Protopapas brawk Brock Somerhalder johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid were all swept 2-0. But the 2-1 loss to 100 Thieves hit XSET hard.

Syyko's typically calm demeanor didn't show after the loss to 100 Thieves. He was upset at the team for the loss, and the players upset at themselves for letting their coach and themselves down in a game they shouldn't have lost, according to the coach. He eventually treated it as a lesson in complacency and the importance of keeping the energy, the atmosphere. No matter how strong XSET had become, it was still important to keep their eye on the prize and their foot on the gas, to keep giving it their all in every round and match.

That loss also fueled XSET's playoffs run, which started with them sweeping 100 Thieves 2-0.

“I think they really used that as energy and it fueled their passion going into 100 Thieves in the playoffs,” the coach said. “They really just came in with a fire, it was really clear that every single player on this team just wanted that win over 100 Thieves more than anything else in the world on that day. They knew that they shouldn't have beat us the last time, they knew that we could beat them this time and they wanted their vengeance and they got it.”

The 2-0 against 100 Thieves was immediately contrasted by a 3-1 loss to a COVID-ridden OpTic Gaming OpTic Gaming Inactive in the second weekend of competition. XSET picked themselves back up and shook the dust off, beating FaZe Clan FaZe Clan Inactive POISED Kevin Ngo mummAy Anthony DiPaolo TiGG Tanner Spanu BABYBAY Andrej Francisty supamen Phat Le 3-1 in the lower bracket final to secure the final NA seed in Copenhagen. A day later, they hit OpTic with the same result and not only claimed the first seed for their region in Masters Copenhagen, but also claimed the title of North American champions.

In doing so, XSET broke a wall they had never been able to and lifted their own curse. While the team has finished second on two occasions, those tournaments didn't crown anyone as a regional champion or even award a LAN slot. But, for many of these players, it won't be their first rodeo.

AYRIN is a former CrossFire player who attended several LANs. BcJ , as a former Apex Legends player for T1 and a former Battalion 1944 player, has also played on a multitude of LANs. Finally, dephh spent three years under the banner of Complexity and attended countless LANs during that time.

And even for Cryocells and zekken, who have much less experience playing on a stage, XSET is taking the steps to get them ready for that new experience.

“We're training in scrims with the in-ear monitors and white noise over, getting prepared for the differences in audio quality. We've been taking them to smaller LANs in the offseason to get extra reps in outside of their comfort zone,” Syyko noted. “And though it's not a massive LAN experience, it's still on a stage, competing against others in setups that aren't your own. We're actively taking steps to ensure that we're as prepared as possible for this LAN event, and hopefully when we get there we'll be able to just slide in and play the game that we always do.”

Despite all of this, XSET are not downplaying how big their regional win is. The team took a break to allow the fact that they are the champions of North America to sink in, but the “job's not over.”

“There's a whole new event [we're] going into now, we're starting from scratch and we need to be ready to go up against teams who will be well prepared for us and, like I said, are the best teams in their respective regions. After our short break, we jumped immediately back into our heavy, eight to nine hour practice days, and we've just been grinding it out.”

XSET are soon to fly for Copenhagen to play their first-ever international LAN. And while Syyko has a positive opinion on Riot's format, singling out the LATAM/BR LCQ as an outlier in the qualification format, there's one thing he does not want to happen.

“I absolutely hope [we don't rematch OpTic]. A big part of qualifying for these events is our desire to match up against our peers from across the world,” Syyko said. “Nobody wants to fly a 15-hour connecting flight from Texas to Copenhagen just to play against the team that lives down the street from you. It's not ideal, not to mention they're a very good team.

OpTic have to, once more, slog through the group stage. Last time, it led them to their first Masters title in an almost spotless run.

“I still think that OpTic are one of the best teams in the world, if not the best team in the world. I don't think that they will struggle too much, but there are a lot of good teams,” Syyko said. “We can get some wildly different results this event than we got in the last one but I am confident in OpTic's ability to continuously play well, adapt to the team that they're going up against and come out victorious.”

Syyko highlighted two big names that they'd like to play against: DRX DRX Korea Rank #4 Flashback Cho Min-hyuk (조민혁) MaKo Kim Myeong-gwan (김명관) Athan Na Ha-jun (나하준) freeing No Ha-jun (노하준) HYUNMIN Song Hyun-min (송현민) and Guild Esports Guild Esports Inactive .

“I'm hoping that we get matched up against some European or Asian teams, and get to experience some different looks and have some fun,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for DRX. I've always admired the way that their team is structured. You can tell that that team has a lot of respect for their coaching staff, they're very playbook-oriented, very well-drilled. I'm really interested in matching up against them hopefully, I think that would be a really solid matchup. And then obviously I'd love to play Guild. I think it's really cool that we have kind of similar narratives that could culminate with us potentially playing each other in Copenhagen in playoffs. I think that would be a really cool experience as well.”

Guild are XSET's perfect European counterparts. Much like Syyko's team, Guild have long suffered from the same curse and have often finished just outside qualifying slots. Prior to 2022's Stage 2, the closest the team got was in the grand finals of the EMEA LCQ — which they lost 3-1.

In the end, though, it doesn't matter who XSET face. The team goes into each match with a unique game plan based on their opponents, and oftentimes stick to what Syyko calls the “XSET way.” There's no risk of over-respecting or being scared of an opponent.

“We respect a lot of teams, we think a lot of teams are good, but the minute that we enter that pre-match lobby, the minute those guys are competitors for us, they're bad. We are the better team, and we're going to beat them no matter what.”