Two teams qualified for Berlin on the first day of VCT North America Stage 3: Challengers Playoffs leaving just one spot left for the remaining six teams to fight for.

The second day of competition led to the elimination of four teams: TSM TSM North America Rank #8 seven Johann Hernandez gMd Anthony Guimond , Luminosity Luminosity Inactive moose Kaleb Jayne mada Adam Pampuch dazzLe Will Loafman bdog Brandon Sanders TiGG Tanner Spanu , FaZe Clan FaZe Clan Inactive POISED Kevin Ngo mummAy Anthony DiPaolo TiGG Tanner Spanu BABYBAY Andrej Francisty supamen Phat Le , and Rise Rise Inactive . The day's survivors, Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker and XSET XSET Inactive , must now fight for the final North American spot in Berlin.

The day was scheduled much like the first. Each match was played at the same time as another match in the bracket, rewarding those with two screens to follow the action on. The tournament's first elimination games were set to begin the day while the next pair of elimination games would end it.

Rise triumphed over TSM 2-1 in one of the opening matches. TSM started strong with a 13-10 victory on Haven, but stumbled down the stretch while Rise heated up. Rise won the next two maps comfortably: 13-6 on Haven and 13-5 on Breeze.

Five of the match's six pistol rounds went Rise's way, their lone pistol defeat being the opening round of the series. Dominance in the pistols boosted Rise's momentum in the second half of maps throughout the match, winning the first four rounds of the first map's second half, all seven rounds of the second map's latter half, and all six rounds of the final map's second half.

TSM did look better on pistols when they were switching to pistols as secondary weapons.

The other match to open the day looked similar to the one between Rise and TSM. Luminosity won the first map of the series but ultimately lost 2-1 after FaZe got going halfway through the match.

FaZe's 13-6 win on the second map of the match was led by Andrej "BABYBAY" Francisty's 461 ACS and 259.4 ADR performance en route to 29 kills. Despite those incredible stats, BABYBAY never killed more than three in a single round. Instead, he relied on eight multikills split evenly between 3Ks and 2Ks.

BABYBAY was unsatisfied with his highlight reel that map, so he made an attempt to add to it.

Luminosity's two matches were Kaleb "moose" Jayne's first two matches since he broke his wrist earlier this year. He said he didn't plan on playing this weekend at first, but his teammates asked if he was ready was to return. His cast had only been off for about a week, but he was performing well in ranked. So he said yes.

He doesn't know if it was the rust or the wrist or what, but something wasn't right for him this week.

"I played pretty much as bad as I could play like in any tournament ever," moose said. "I'm definitely just gonna step it up in the next one and go back to the drawing board and figure out what we got to do as a team. And with some more practice, I think it'll all be okay."

Unlike the first day, matches continued to go the distance beyond the opening pair. Envy beat FaZe 2-1 and XSET eliminated Rise 2-1.

The matchup between Envy and FaZe did not lack in excitement. Nine out of the lobby's 10 players earned a 4K at some point in the match and nine out of 10 players won at least one clutch.

Screenshot of performance chart for Envy and FaZe, all but ZachaREEE had a 4K and all but corey had a clutch Every player in the match had at least one highlight play.

"Everyone was definitely coming up huge on both teams," Victor "Victor" Wong said after the match. "They were getting a lot of multikills, we were getting a lot of multikills. It's tiring. That's all I can say, it's just tiring."

While the series was loaded on 4Ks, Corey "corey" Nigra was the only player in the series to get an ace.

Envy was prepared for FaZe's trademark aggression and got the opening pick of the round 18 more times than FaZe did. Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker particularly feasted, going +14 in first kills to first deaths in the match, a start contrast to his Jett counterpart, BABYBAY, who went -15 in the same stat.

Once again the coinciding matches mirrored each other. Rise started the match with a 13-7 win on Haven off the back of eight straight round wins to close out the map. XSET, however, responded with force and take the next two maps 13-10 and 13-7.

Despite the defeat, Derrek "Derrek" Ha shined in the match. His two 4Ks were tied for the most in the match and he led the way in clutches thanks to two 1v2 wins and three 1v1 wins.

Derrek is pretty good at closing out rounds.

Rory "dephh" Jackson mentioned the day before his XSET squad just needed to get through the first day to be able to make a deep run in a tournament. So far, that appears to be holding true. XSET needs just one more win to make it to their first ever LAN.

"We're going in with full confidence tomorrow," Bryce "PureR" Lovell said, explaining that his team likes to be able to build confidence up over the course of a tournament or qualifier. "Probably more confident than we've ever been."

The four teams left in the tournament were the favorites from the start, and at least based on their matches so far, don't seem to be all that far apart from each other. Tomorrow's match and the tournament alike are still anyone's game.

"In my opinion, honestly whoever plays better that day could take the series," PureR said. "It's gonna be really hard. But I think if we have a good day tomorrow, we will take it home for sure."

While Rise and FaZe didn't finish quite where they would have liked, the year isn't over for them yet. Both teams played well enough to secure a place in North America's Last Chance Qualifier for the Champions LAN at the end of the year.

FaZe were always likely to make it at least that far after a strong runner-up finish in Masters 1. But Rise wasn't on anyone's radar prior to Stage 3.

"We had an incredible run," Phat "supamen" Le said. "We honestly did this for ourselves. We saw that people were hating on us and saying we're not going to make it far. Saying we shouldn't be one of the teams qualifying. But we showed them. We showed them that we deserve to be here."

Rise and FaZe alike had to come in immediately after three-map matches to take on teams coming in fresh. corey mentioned he and his teammates didn't really get a chance to eat or recuperate. supamen said his team started to run out of steam as the second match went on.

"We were fighting a long battle," corey said.

"It is what it is, we can't really dwell on our loss," supamen said. "We can't really make excuses, we just have to do better next time."

Both teams will look to perfect their gameplay between now and the Last Chance Qualifier to snag that final spot at Champions. They'll have plenty of time to review VODs and come back stronger.

"Honestly, not sure," corey said when asked what FaZe will focus on improving the most. "We got two months to figure that out, so I guess we'll find out then."

Neither Envy nor XSET will have quite that time to prepare for their Masters Berlin qualifier. They're looking at a turnaround of less than 24 hours to prepare. What they do with that time might be the difference between a trip to Germany or a trip to the practice range.