The final spot for VCT Americas Stage 1 Playoffs came down to the final game of the group stages, with NRG facing off against Leviatan with the NA side taking down the LATAM organisation.

Despite being a top 3 teams at Champions Seoul last year, Leviatan have had a serious fall from grace after losing aspas and Mazino. They replaced those two players with Rossy and Demon1, which seems to not have worked in their favour. aspas with MIBR has made play offs with a 4-1 record whilst Mazino with KRU has made play offs with a 4-1 record also.

Leviatan have bombed out of Stage 1 with a 1-4 record with the only team they beat being FURIA who ended the stage 0-5. They seem to have some role issues that seemed to slow them down with Demon1 playing the Viper and Omen, which did not fit his aggressive play style at all.

They moved Demon1 back to the Controller/ Duelist role that made him the most desired player of 2024, which was shown in this series where he picked up the Brimstone and the Jett whilst kiNgg played Neon on Fracture and Viper on Icebox.

Despite moving back to his glory day role, mada from NRG topped the leaderboard with 49 frags across the two maps on the Raze and the Reyna with an astonishing 16 first kills compared to Demon1’s 8.

Whilst mada dominated the series, it meant the end of the road for Leviatan, with serious questions needed to be asked of this roster and whether or not it is due to blow it up and make a few changes to make this roster competitive again.

Despite FiNESSE’s scoreline, it was clear that on Fracture, he was just outcalling Rossy on Leviatan, with so many rounds going to an empty site with the IGL of NRG controlling the rotations so easily, his KDA was not important if you can control the enemy this easily.

MADA CALLS GAME pic.twitter.com/VxsSquEyp8

— NRG (@NRGgg) April 21, 2025

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This win sends NRG into playoffs with the bottom seed in the lower bracket where they will eventually face off against the loser of MIBR vs 100Thieves in the upper bracket.

NRG are on thin ice in the lower bracket with one loss meaning they are out of VCT until Stage 2 kicks off where they will join Leviatan who are now out of VCT until Stage 2, after a really shocking start to the season in comparison to their expectations.