Last time Keyd Stars Keyd Stars Inactive played a match in Berlin, the team fell one match short of making it out of the group stage as Brazil's top seed. They were unable to maintain the magic that powered their unlikely run through Brazil's final Stage 3 bracket and were bested by another South American squad.

Keyd Stars in a huddle together at Masters 3 Image credit: Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games

Keyd Stars are different now than they were then. How, exactly, that difference affects their performance? No one knows. Their last match in Berlin was also their last match, period.

The most obvious way Keyd Stars will show up to Champions a different team than they were in Masters 3 is in their lineup. The team added star duelist player Leonardo "mwzera" Serrati on loan from Gamelanders Blue to replace Lucas "ntk" Martins.

It's a change a little more complicated than switching out one part for a version of it in a different color.

ntk has long been a support player, specializing in Sova particularly. At Masters 3, his role also encompassed Sage. mwzera is not a support player. He plays Raze. Sometimes he'll play another duelist like Reyna or Jett. Recently, he's played a lot of Skye.

Their roles couldn't be more different. On most teams, Raze is the first to enter onto a site and Sova is the last.

But mwzera is a talented player, the country's first Valorant superstar and today still in the conversation for Brazil's best player. Keyd Stars added him to their Champions lineup because they were confident he could make the adjustment.

“His arrival added a lot to the team for the security he brings and his versatility,” said Pedro "Koy" Pulig, Keyd Stars' coach. “Although he's not playing his primary role, he managed to adapt very quickly. What we needed exactly is a guy who is the last in the round and can guarantee wins from behind with his intelligence and aim, and he does this very well.”

Should he fit into this new role as well as his coach suggests he will, mwzera could create a kind of three-headed dragon for Keyd Stars that no Brazilian team on international stages has had before. Olavo "heat" Marcelo dazzled on stage with a phenomenal Jett performance, and Murillo "murizzz" Tuchtenhagen proved to be an exceptional counterpart with fantastic performances of his own on other duelists. murizzz has often been able to pick up the slack when heat has underperformed and vice versa, but Keyd Stars still suffered from rare moments when both weren't playing up to their usual standard. Now, with mwzera's addition, it may be next to impossible for opposing teams to catch Keyd Stars on a day where all of the team's stars are underperforming.

Keyd Stars' final game in Masters 3 was one such game when both heat and murizzz failed to deliver. But they both now have something they didn't have when they played that match: experience in an international Valorant LAN. That's something mwzera lacks.

Despite all of the success of mwzera and his teammates in 2020, Gamelanders Blue failed to qualify for both Masters 2 or Masters 3. He joined Keyd Stars on loan after Gamelanders Blue also failed to qualify for Champions through South America's Last Chance Qualifier.

While it's impossible to know what kind of impact, if any, that may have on mwzera's performance at Champions, his new teammates can attest to the benefits of experience against international competition. They learned a lot from just six maps in Berlin.

“The main thing we learned from Masters 3 without a doubt was the response speed of the international teams, their reaction time in the game is really very absurd,” Koy said. “They always do something that overlaps your move and this is something that we have been improving on a lot.”

Keyd Stars have not been short on supply of time to improve upon that and every other facet of their play since Masters 3. Their opening match in Champions will mark their first match since Sept. 15, a gap in play of two and a half months.

They've been attempting to use that time wisely. mwzera's addition became official less than two weeks after he was eliminated from the LCQ, and since then the team has been working on new things for all five players. Koy said the team is bootcamping in Europe, which is helping the team to develop further.

“We've been training very intensely for this championship,” Koy said.

Half a year ago, it would have been absurd to think this specific group of players with this specific organization would be training for Champions using what they learned from a Masters LAN they competed in previously.

At that time, it would have been less abnormal to imagine mwzera on the Champions stage, dueling with the likes of Tyson "TenZ" Ngo and Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom. In fact, it seemed strange to imagine a Champions without him.

But reality favored the upstart Keyd Stars rosters and it looked like 2021 would deny the world an opportunity to see mwzera against the best each region had to offer.

After a few more twists of fate, we eventually got the best of both worlds. The dynamic, still freshly-constructed Keys Stars roster will include mwzera at Valorant's first ever Champions tournament. He and heat and murizzz and Jonathan "JhoW" Glória and Gabriel "v1xen" Martins will get a chance to prove Brazil's might to the rest of the world in a way they were unable to do just a few months before.

As long as their training pays off.

Dimi contributed to this story with interviews and translations.