The first two teams to secure their places in Upper Semifinals of Masters North America: Stage 1 are Envy Envy Inactive Marved Jimmy Nguyen Victor Victor Wong crashies Austin Roberts FiNESSE Pujan Mehta yay Jaccob Whiteaker and FaZe Clan FaZe Clan Inactive POISED Kevin Ngo mummAy Anthony DiPaolo TiGG Tanner Spanu BABYBAY Andrej Francisty supamen Phat Le following strong performances from both teams.

Seed 1 vs. Seed 8 — Envy vs. Gen.G (2-1)

Envy and their opponents, Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) yoman Chae Young-moon (채영문) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) , kicked off the day with a back-and-forth three match set.

"We were coming in very, very confident," Gen.G Operator specialist Danny "HUYNH" Huynh said.

While his confidence appeared to be misplaced after a 13-6 defeat on Haven, his team found their stride on Icebox and beat Envy 13-5.

Envy IGL Pujan "FiNESSE" Mehta praised Gen.G's game plan on Icebox, which caught Envy by surprise with a switch from their usual agent composition. Still, FNS maintained that their stumble on Icebox doesn't reflect how they usually play on the map.

"We're really confident on [Icebox]," he said. "It's just today was definitely, hopefully a one off." He said they specifically had a game plan for Gen.G's previous composition, which utilized Killjoy, but were thrown off by the addition of Sage to replace Killjoy.

Envy bounced back to close out the series on the last map, Bind, 13-10. As exciting as a close final map was for viewers, Envy's Jake "kaboose" McDonald was unhappy with it.

"The match was a little closer than we would have hoped for," he said before taking the positive from it. "I'm really proud of our composure to close out the games, but we just had some slow starts [and mistakes] that we have to fix [...] later on in the event."

huynh was also frustrated with the final map, although he saw it quite differently from kaboose.

"It just sucks that on Bind we kind of threw and there were a lot of unfortunate rounds that did not go our way, and also the eco kind of hurt us," he said. "I feel like we should have won that series."

That feeling may soon be a boon to Gen.G in the double-elimination format of Masters.

"But it's okay. We play next on Saturday in the lower bracket," he continued. "And I mean, in our heads, we should have beat the first seed so I don't think the other teams scare us at all. I think we'll be fine in the lower bracket. We'll just bounce back."

The Sophisticated Smeag — Faze Clan vs. XSET (2-0)

While the next series, a rematch between FaZe Clan and the last team to beat them, XSET XSET Inactive , started as close as the first series ended, FaZe dominated most of the match. The series went 2-0 in favor of FaZe thanks to a 13-6 win on Haven and a 13-3 win on Bind.

XSET began the series by jumping ahead to a 5-4 lead on the first map, but they then lost the momentum and never took it back. They won just four rounds in the remaining map and a half of the series.

"The turning point was simply BABYBAY going absolute sicko mode," XSET Raze player Jordan "AYRIN" He said. "We know he's a great player [...] but we weren't expecting him to have that type of performance against us."

Andrej "BABYBAY" Francisty's dominance in the first map of the series was undeniable. He topped the server in almost every single category while putting up a 415 ACS and a 28:12 K:D ratio.

"It was an Overwatch player on an Overwatch-type character," Bryce "PureR" Lovell described. "Just running around shooting knives at everybody, they got Breach to help them out, they got Raze for the trade frag, they also got darts, so... we weren't really ready for their comp or strategy."

The fact that they were going to run a new composition wasn't necessarily a surprise. "We beat them — I think two weeks ago — fairly convincingly, so we knew that they were making a comp change," AYRIN said. "But I guess we weren't ready enough for all the things that they were going to throw at us."

Describing his team's last match with XSET, FaZe duelist and captain Corey "corey" Nigra said his team was "definitely not prepared and/or provided a lot of specific strategies or ideas to the game" and was "still stuck behind the meta at the time." He described that tournament, back in Challengers 2, as one in which they played a kind of PUG-like format and were too stubborn to evolve their playstyle to one that matched the meta.

But in his mind, their last series with XSET was close, and that gave them confidence heading into this one after a dominant run with their new compositions and playstyle in Challengers 3.

A key part of that playstyle has been the move away from putting Zachary "ZachaREEE" Lombardo on a traditional sentinel like Cypher or Killjoy on some maps and instead on Breach — a facet of their composition PureR noted for good reason.

ZachaREEE led all players across the four teams that played today in assists per round, consistently setting up kills with his flashes and stuns.

"Our thinking behind [using Breach over a sentinel] was, since we do like to fight and our playstyle is very aggressive, why not have that extra utility in order to help our aggressive players strive in their fights with like flashes, stuns, even stopping the enemy team from taking good positions," corey said.

The aggressive player benefitting the most from that in the first map was definitely BABYBAY, but everyone was getting in on the action in the second map. While everyone on the team had a positive K:D ratio on Bind, corey ended up leading the way in kills and damage for his team on that map. "We have a bunch of other stars hidden under the cloth," corey said with confidence after talking about BABYBAY's current spotlight at the end of the interview.

XSET's confidence isn't shaken either. While they didn't move on in the upper bracket to play Envy like FaZe will, they are still in the tournament and will play Gen.G in the lower bracket next.

AYRIN noted that XSET was "stomped" in their first matches of both Challengers 1 and Challengers 2. "But we always come back through the lowers," he said. "And this is nothing new. I think after the performance we showed here, they might underestimate us and go ahead, I think that's a positive thing."

And they're already eager for an opportunity to run it back with FaZe again.

"I think we know how to kind of counter [their composition and strategy], but they were just super aggressive and they won out their trades. Their post-plants and their retakes were super good, both on defense and attack," PureR said. "It's really hard to counter but I think we have an idea, if we play them again, of how to beat them. I just don't think we executed that today."

The bracket so far

Before any rematch is possible of today's late match, today's defeated teams will have to play each other on Saturday and today's winning teams will get to play against each other on Sunday.

All of those matches will come after tomorrow's matches to close out the tournament's first round. Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #4 N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid will play Luminosity Luminosity Inactive moose Kaleb Jayne mada Adam Pampuch dazzLe Will Loafman bdog Brandon Sanders TiGG Tanner Spanu in the day's first series and Immortals Immortals Inactive will play 100 Thieves 100 Thieves North America Rank #7 zander Alexander Dituri Cryocells Matthew Panganiban eeiu Daniel Vucenovic Boostio Kelden Pupello Asuna Peter Mazuryk in the day's second match.

You can follow those matches, the rest of the tournament, and each region's first Masters competition of the year on VLR.gg's event pages.

bleghfarec contributed with interviews for this recap.