LOUD shine in their heavyweight debut

Despite losing one of the premier superstars in the world during the offseason, LOUD LOUD Brazil Rank #1 Quick Gabriel Lima saadhak Matias Delipetro Less Felipe de Loyola tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira once again showed that they can rebuild a contender during a 2-0 victory over a resurgent Sentinels Sentinels North America Rank #3 TenZ Tyson Ngo Zellsis Jordan Montemurro zekken Zachary Patrone johnqt Mohamed Amine Ouarid Sacy Gustavo Rossi roster. SEN had dominated offseason events with new acquisition Zellsis replacing pANcada , but the team once again stumbled in domestic play.

LOUD threw chaos to the winds with unconventional compositions, removing sentinels from their agent pools to clear Sentinels from their path to Masters Madrid. A culminating beatdown of blinding abilities from four separate agents on Ascent pushed LOUD into the winners match of Group B, two match wins away from another international berth.

All offseason LOUD cautioned that they brought in Quick to allow flexibility to add new layers to the team rather than attempt the impossible task of filling the shoes of aspas , and Quick immediately showcased something completely new and powerful as a topfrag centerpiece for LOUD's new style.

The Brazilians brought a mildly unusual double controller double initiator agent composition to Split with Quick as the sole duelist. Their plethora of utility allowed them to get positioning around the map then execute onto sites during their attack. It was Sentinels, however, that set the tone with a ninja defuse to open the map and a follow up ninja in the fourth round.

A retake oriented setup has its drawbacks, illustrated nicely by a postplant ace by cauanzin to keep LOUD in the map.

Without a sentinel to lock down a site, LOUD had to be aggressive on their defensive half. SEN tried to make life difficult for site anchors, but they were constantly repelled from the prime staging grounds for site executes and funneled around the map.

LOUD snuck in a pistol ninja defuse of their own, and it was all too easy from there. Quick and saadhak combined for more kills than the entirety of Sentinels in the second half to mount a 13-11 comeback. Strong opening duel statistics from zekken and TenZ were insufficient to stave off LOUD's dynamic midrounding, and Sacy in particular struggled with a single digit kill total.

While LOUD's Split composition dabbled their toes in the unorthodox, their Ascent composition dove into the deep end. In an era where a single agent composition has dominated Ascent for years, a combination of Phoenix, Breach, and Viper is unheard of. In fact, in the entirety of the VLR database, LOUD's composition has never been used on any map before.

The rolling barrage of flashes set up numerous quick site executes onto A. LOUD took short range map control at will. Unfortunately for them, Sacy arrived on the server hungry to make up for his early struggles. He notched a blazing 20 kills in the first half to pull SEN into the lead.

Although Ascent has long been the most defensive map in the game, the lack of a sentinel again forced LOUD to be aggressive. Several mid crunches and flash heavy retakes overwhelmed a SEN squad that lost all momentum. LOUD rolled to a dominant 13-9 victory to take the series.

Quick led the server with 39 kills in a close match with many hero plays on both sides. In the end, LOUD's dynamic style prevailed.

LOUD move to the Group B winners match for a chance to qualify to the playoffs. SEN drop to the losers match where they will have to win twice in a row just to qualify to the play-in stage. SEN next play on Monday the 19th while LOUD play on Friday the 23rd.

Banner image by Reece Martinez/Riot Games