One month after the 2023 VALORANT Champions Tour season came to an end, fans got to look back on the year as a whole, truly widening their lens to see some of the most iconic moments. Players joined in on the fun, but the Paper Rex crew had one play in mind as it defined their Masters Tokyo run only two months before their final match of the season.
Both Patiphan “CGRS” Posri and Jason “f0rsakeN” Susanto recently got to look back at their overtime win against NRG on Pearl, where their substitute player and content creator capitalized on a big misplay to win the round and, eventually, the series. It was either extremely painful or very elating to watch based on which team you supported at the time, but it was undoubtedly one of the most iconic moments of the year.
With star duelist Ilya “something” Petrov unable to travel to Tokyo with Paper Rex, substitute CGRS filled in at the Masters Tokyo tournament in June 2023. He did his role well fitting in with the team, but his highlight was a clutch in what seemed like an unwinnable scenario. In a one-vs-one situation with only seconds before the timer ran out, CGRS chased down NRG’s Sam “s0m” Oh to kill him and get the overtime round win.
S0m, when the play began, was playing that scenario nearly perfectly, using his Harbor Cove to hide. But CGRS was aware of it, running into the cove and swinging out, focusing on the corner. S0m ratted an angle instead of running away and then moved at the worst possible time, whiffing his Shorty shots and dying only a second before he would’ve won the round.
After that run at Tokyo, CGRS never played a match again for Paper Rex and announced his departure from the organization on Sept. 11. Either way, he made his mark, being as aggressive as his teammates were and making the most of an enemy’s mistake. The season concluded, and even post-Champions, the team at VALORANT esports added this moment to its videos, most notably one with pros reacting to unique moments from Masters Tokyo.
CGRS and f0rsakeN were able to watch back something that they probably laughed over before. But now, fans got to hear their thoughts on the situation. For f0rsakeN, he was calling the play for CGRS to rush from the sidelines, knowing exactly what s0m would do.
“I knew that s0m was going to do something like this, as a content creator,” f0rsakeN said in the video. “I believed that he was going to do something like this for sure. If we lost that round, [go down] 14-13, maybe we lose that map. We won the round, bring our mood up, we bring the momentum back and we just win the map.”
CGRS said he will “remember that forever,” which is understandable considering that Paper Rex had him signed as a content creator more than an actual substitute. F0rsakeN was quick to chime in after, saying “I think it’s a nightmare for s0m, too,” which led to chuckles from the two players.
There were some other misplay highlights from both Masters Tokyo and the 2023 season as a whole, but it’s hard to find one that both lifts and decimates specific fans as much as this one. NRG were a team defined by their inability to get deeper than fourth place and, in this case, lost despite facing a team using a substitute. That was their best bet to make it deep in an international tournament in 2023, and this misplay might’ve been the catalyst for their changes in the offseason.
