Gen.G open Champions Seoul with dominant victory over Sentinels

Thursday's opening match of Champions Seoul saw a rematch between the two grand finalists of Masters Madrid, with Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Meteor Kim Tae-O (김태오) Lakia Kim Jong-min (김종민) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) and Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #3 TenZ Tyson Ngo Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid Sacy Gustavo Rossi squaring off for the third time this year. A clash between the two Masters champions of the 2024 season saw Gen. G, with their Korean home crowd behind them, claim a dominant 2-0 victory.

The two-map series was played out on Haven and Ascent, with Haven being Sentinels' pick and Ascent being Gen. G's pick. Gen.G won Haven 13-8 and clinched Ascent 13-7 to close the series.

The match was the first of two opening stage matches in Group B. Gen. G will await the winner of FunPlus Phoenix FunPlus Phoenix China Rank #3 Autumn Kale Dunne Life Qu Donghao (瞿东豪) AAAAY Zhang Yang (张杨) BerLIN Zhang Bolin (張柏霖) Lysoar Liang Youhao (梁优好) and Team Heretics Team Heretics Europe Rank #1 MiniBoo Dominykas Lukaševičius Wo0t Mert Alkan RieNs Enes Ecirli benjyfishy Benjamin David Fish Boo Ričardas Lukaševičius , while Sentinels will play the losing team in an elimination match.

Gen.G clinched three pistol rounds and three anti-eco rounds, securing them six rounds out of the 26 that would require a win in a two-map match. With Gen.G virtually being the home team and beginning three out of four halves of the match with momentum on their side, they'd secure a revenge victory over the only team to have beaten them on the international stage.

Gen. G seemed to overcome the nightmares they suffered on Haven against DRX DRX Korea Rank #2 Flashback Cho Min-hyuk (조민혁) BuZz Yu Byung-chul (유병철) MaKo Kim Myeong-gwan (김명관) Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) BeYN Kang Ha-bin (강하빈) in the Pacific Grand Finals, where they had secured just two rounds on the defensive half.

In the closing stages of the first half, in which Gen. G began on defense, a seemingly surefire Sentinels round was flipped in favor of Gen. G, with t3xture securing a 1v2 clutch on just 3 HP to give the Korean outfit a 6-5 lead.

With a mix of excellent retakes, individual heroics, and excellent reads from Munchkin , the Pacific region's IGL of the year, Gen. G secured map one 13-8 – seven of those rounds coming on the presumably tougher defensive half.

Gen.G duelist t3xture finished the map 24-12 with an ACS of 305. All the while, Gen.G made life tough for Sentinels duelist zekken , who finished Haven 7-19 with an ACS of 115.

The Haven win comes weeks after Gen.G was dismantled by fellow Korean superpower DRX in the Pacific Grand Finals. On DRX's attack half, Gen.G managed just two rounds.

On two occasions, Gen.G's in-game leader Munchkin, playing on Viper, paved the way for a plant on A site via a lurk through A short, securing a man advantage and a free site.

Despite recent changes in the meta, Munchkin found relative success on Viper. Gen.G's coaching staff of solo and HSK seem to still see positives in the controller agent, even if she only has one Snake Bite now.

“Personally, I've been telling the coaching staff, ‘I don't want to play Viper', but the coaching staff still believe Viper is still a viable and very strong agent in a lot of the maps,” Munchkin said following the match. “The nerf isn't to the point where it would hurt the games or the strategies that we run, so I think that's why we still run the Viper.”

After snatching Sentinels's map pick away from them, Gen.G marched into their own map pick of Ascent with the confidence of a team possessing home-field advantage.

On a map widely regarded as being defense-sided, Gen.G finished their first half, their attack half, with eight rounds secured against Sentinels's double-sentinel team comp.

On the defensive side to open the map and with johnqt and Zellsis on Deadlock and Cypher, Sentinels should have had an advantage. However, Gen.G's multi-level attack, which utilized Munchkin's KAY/O NULL/cmd, Meteor 's Killjoy Lockdown and Lakia 's Sova Hunter's Fury, locked down Gen.G's attack half. Four of their eight attack half wins came from spike detonations.

After securing eight rounds on their attack half, Gen.G went on to secure five of eight rounds on defense to secure the map and the match.

On Haven, Gen.G's Karon finished with the most kills in the server, also having two separate 4K's on the map. The consensus rookie of the year frontrunner continues his dominant form and looks to push Gen.G to a miraculous sixth Grand Final this year.

Gen.G's match against the winner of FunPlus Phoenix and Team Heretics will take place on August 6, while Sentinels will take on the losing team on August 10.