NRG Esports has always been one of the stronger rosters in North American Valorant, but with the addition of James “hazed” Cobb, the team has seen an uptick in results, only losing two series’ since the former TSM in-game leader joined them. While it is still early days for this new five, there are signs of promise in NRG, considering their stacked firepower across the board as along with considerable individual experience to boot. Here’s a look at their Haven match against Renegades in the NSG Winter Open 7, in which they won in 13–9 fashion.
Agent Composition
In this match, NRG ran an agent composition of Sova, Cypher, KAY/O, Jett, and Astra. While this comp is different from the current “Meta” comp that sees Skye in place of KAY/O, it still functions in a similar manner. The KAY/O pick allowed for powerful setups around the A side of the map on both sides
Defense
Overview
Overall, NRG’s defense looked incredibly difficult to maneuver against, with players just shutting down site hits and attempts at aggression by attackers singlehandedly. NRG was mostly going for early A aggression in their defense and would play retakes afterward, occasionally flanking. Because of how powerful this early A pressure was, it allowed the team to get into favorable retakes against the weakened defenders.
NRG’s defense player locations show their high A presence:
Pistol
For their pistol round, NRG has their Sova and Jett players eeiu and s0m fight A Lobby from A Long, and their KAY/O and Astra players tex and hazed walk down mid to start. They also set up their Cypher player ANDROID to play retake on C site. After the initial mid and A fighting, NRG falls back and decides to play for retake on A site.
For their A retake, an Astra suck and KAY/O grenade are used for default, a Sova recon is used for site, and Astra smokes block off A Long and A Short. The retake is kicked off by s0m dashing into site from Spawn and the rest of the team following afterward. Unfortunately, in this case, the round is lost thanks to a good post-plant by Renegades.
Setups
NRG runs a few different defensive setups but they all are focused on having two players covering two areas of the map (for example, Astra B and Cypher Garage/ with C retake utility) and the rest of the team stacking together on one other area (A in this example). Since these setups will always have one area unattended to, NRG uses ANDROID’s Cypher tripwires to cover the gaps, such as having a tripwire for B while he plays in Garage.
Here are a few of the setups shown in the match:
A Control
One aspect of NRG’s defense that I thought was well executed was how well they were able to take A Lobby control at the start of the round. The most common early A aggression they ran was having tex throw a KAY/O grenade or flash, hazed use an Astra suck or smoke, and eeiu throw a Sova recon in A Lobby to stop the attackers from pushing forward, and to get s0m in a position to pick up easy operator kills from A Long or Short.
This example of NRG’s A control throws in a Sova ultimate instead of a recon:
On rounds where they had a solo A setup, NRG had tex run window to throw a KAY/O knife from mid that scans A Lobby to make Renegades believe there were more defenders towards the A side of the map.
Attack
Overview
This specific match didn’t showcase much defaulting and came down to 5v5 post plants or Renegades shutting down NRG before they could even get anything going with some good position and plays. Even though I couldn’t take away too much of what the game plan was for NRG’s attack here, I did notice that ANDROID’s Sewer lurks were the main point of taking map control for the team and caused them to plant A once ANDROID found timings to walk in for free.
NRG was mostly planting before the 50-second mark and only got a total of 7 pre-plant kills in their entire attacking half!
Pistol
Once again, NRG lost this pistol round as it ended up as a 1v1. To start, eeiu Sova drones up C Long for s0m to run and follow it, getting a kill. The other 3 players split from Garage, with tex throwing a KAY/O knife to clear it. Once on site, the team fights the Renegades players back site with a recon arrow.
Sova Recon + KAY/O Knife
One utility combo that NRG used for A control in a few rounds was a knife paired with a recon. This works in a similar way to the Reyna flash and Sova recon combo you would see on Icebox, as it is difficult to break both the knife and the recon before they activate as a defender. Because of this, defenders would rather fall back most of the time as it is a safer option, granting attackers safe map control.
C Site Rush
To push onto C site on round 19, NRG had s0m follow a Sova drone from C Long into site, tex throw a KAY/O knife on-site as well as flash from Long to follow s0m. While the rest of the team was running up C Long, ANDROID tried to lurk mid.
