Luminosity Luminosity Inactive moose Kaleb Jayne mada Adam Pampuch dazzLe Will Loafman bdog Brandon Sanders TiGG Tanner Spanu lost to Sentinels Sentinels North America Unranked N4RRATE Marshall Massey bang Sean Bezerra Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid in their first match of Masters NA, but it wasn't without a fight.

They took the team generally regarded as North America's best to three maps, beating them on Split while losing Ascent and Icebox.

"We would just get really close to hitting the bomb site and then no one would want to go in," Alex "aproto" Protopapas said of their first map, Ascent. "And by that point, they would already have three or four guys rotated in. So we'd just be going into the bombsite with them all there."

His teammate, Brenden "stellar" McGrath, came to a similar conclusion.

"I think we just weren't really committing to the things that we wanted to commit to. And it offered Sentinels [an opportunity] to rotate into bombsites," he said. "They would delay us enough and just quick rotate two people in and then we would make a bad decision and just try to go anyway."

Their struggles on the attacking side of Ascent put them down 8-4 at the half, and while they played more evenly with Sentinels in the second half, the deficit was too big to overcome.

Luminosity was able bounce back with a 14-12 win on Split, a victory stellar credits at least in part because of a change in their normal strategy on Split. "We've played Sentinels so many times now, especially in like the last two months," he said. "So we were trying to play less default heavy and just more grouping and hitting quick onto areas of the map. Which is like — we just don't do that on Split."

He mentioned the team communicated well and traded people out, something aproto echoed while adding they were hitting all of their shots. And the stats back aproto up.

While he was only third on the scoreboard that map, 56% of the shots aproto hit were headshots. Diondre "YaBoiDre" Bond was lopping off heads effectively himself that map, getting a headshot rate of 40%. And while aproto said he doesn't really have a trick for being such an effective aimer, he did go into a little more detail than just "click on head."

"You can take fights, obviously, that reward certain ways of aiming," he said. "Like one of the rounds in particular, I took two people's heads off because all I saw were their heads from Bottom B to Heaven on B."

Aproto tops the stats scoreboard of the VCT Stage 1 NA Masters so far, with a 38% Headshot rate So far in Masters, barely anyone can even come close to aproto.

Unfortunately for LG, he and the rest of his team cooled off on Icebox while Sentinels' stand-in Tyson "TenZ" Ngo heated up. He was able to average more than 275 damage per round on Reyna to help Sentinels win 12 of the first 15 rounds and ultimately close out the map.

"TenZ [was just] taking heads off and we weren't able to do anything about it," aproto said. He offered that perhaps he and his teammates could have tried to counter him with better spacing or being more aware of when he can push, but then added, "he was just getting away with everything. But then again, he's a great player, so he's gonna be able to do that sometimes. You just got to be able to minimize how often he can do it."

stellar felt similarly to aproto, saying that the best way to deal with a player as hot as TenZ was is to stick together as much as possible. "It's harder against a Reyna because Reyna can just get a quick kill and get out. So if you're not kind of right on top of your teammates ready to trade, then it's pretty hard to just shut the player down unless you're winning the opening duels." He noted they were not. He also added they could have tried throwing more fakes to get him to rotate away from whichever site they ultimately ended up hitting.

Still, despite the strong performance from the Sentinels' substitute player, both stellar and aproto agree that TenZ didn't change much.

"We kind of figured they'd play the same way they also do," stellar said. "Which they did, to be honest, they kind of just plugged TenZ in where he needed to be plugged in."

aproto did note that TenZ peeked middle a lot while on defense more than Sentinels normally would, "but I mean, they did a lot of the same defaults and stuff like that," he added afterwards.

Luminosity lost to Sentinels this time, but they remain 2-2 against Sentinels in 2021 and have won at least one map in every matchup, a claim Sentinels can't make in return.

"I just think we're pretty confident in knowing how they play and I think this game is very matchup based," aproto said. "Sometimes you just honestly play better against certain types of teams."

stellar noted that Luminosity's two wins over Sentinels were their first matches against each other this year. "I think they just didn't know how we were going play and it caught them off guard."

He added that those situations can really favor LG because he thinks their team has some of the best individual skills out of the top teams. At the very least their headshot stats and Sheriff play supports that.

They'll get a chance to prove it in the matches to come. Their loss today only puts them in the lower bracket, keeping their dreams of a Masters championship within their grasp.

"I know that we have a long road ahead. I know the team that we're capable of being. And I'm not too concerned with going through the lower bracket if we have to," stellar said.

"I think if we could get over that first round [of the lower bracket] hump, then we'll be okay. We could easily make it back."