LCQ NA Preview: The Guard vs. FaZe Clan

The Last Chance Qualifiers for North America continue to intensify this week. On Friday, August 12, The Guard vs FaZe Clan will be the first time the teams play each other ever in an official tournament. Here’s how the matchup looks:

[Related: Valorant Last Chance Qualifiers 2022: Where to Watch & Who’s Playing]

Key Stats

Polling by thespike.gg

The Guard: 45%

FaZe Clan: 55%

Last Head-to-Head

The Guard and FaZe Clan have only gone head to head once, and only during the Open Qualifiers, where The Guard won 2-1. It was somewhat of a close match, with FaZe Clan still managing to win eight rounds in the games they lost. This upcoming match will be the first time that The Guard have gone up against FaZe Clan in an official tournament.

NA Point Standings

The Guard has managed to keep their position as second in North America for overall circuit points. FaZe Clan rounds out the very bottom of the rankings at twelfth place.

Career Win Rate

The Guard: 70%

FaZe Clan: 69%

The Guard

The announcement of Riot’s franchising for next year’s competitive scene and onwards have raised the stakes for The Guard. No official announcements have been made yet about what teams have been selected to be official partners, but the bar has been set pretty high. The Guard doesn’t have the years of accumulated fans or history in the VALORANT scene that other teams in the tournament do, so they have to prove that they’re worth a sponsorship if they want to keep competing at the highest level.

The Guard is still new to the VALORANT scene, but they have been constantly over-performing. For the Last Chance Qualifiers they have been undefeated, even toppling the popular Cloud9 in their last game. Despite their momentum, The Guard is still seen as the underdog. The polling for their last game, against Cloud9, had them expected to lose 24% to 76%. Against the Sentinels, they were unfavorable 16% to 84%. Even still, The Guard has been beating all expectations. 

FaZe Clan

FaZe Clan is a giant in the esports world. The organization has teams in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, FIFA, Fortnite and many other scenes. Although the rankings have them low this season, they have still won eight out of their last ten games, hinting at a strong finish to the tournament. Although they lost Shane “Rawkus” Flaherty this May, who went on to become the Head Coach for Sentinels, they signed on two new players: Kevin “POISED” Ngo and Phat “supamen” Le.

POISED

Poised has seen a few teams before joining FaZe. Most notably, he played for Rise, which placed second in last year’s Last Chance Qualifiers. Although he mainly plays Kay/O, he can still mix it up and win with VALORANT’s newest agent, Fade. Poised is also the older brother of Ryan “Shanks” Ngo, a popular twitch streamer for FaZe with 359k followers.

Supamen

The second newcomer to FaZe also played for Rise. Together, they made Rise a strong contender for last year’s Champions in Berlin. He plays smokes, which is an important role for any team. Despite playing a support role, his kills/death ratio is still 1.08.

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