The final match of the VCT Pacific regular season came to a close in dramatic fashion today, with fan-favorite team Paper Rex knocking Indonesia’s Rex Regum Qeon out of their playoff spot.
Even though Paper Rex had already secured their playoff spot, finishing second in the league behind DRX, the team kept up their innovation until the very last moment. Though the second map in the series was down to the wire, PRX defeated RRQ 2-0.
It wouldn’t be a PRX match without a little bit of chaos, and RRQ played into it by selecting Bind as the first map of the match. Bind only recently re-entered the map pool, so every team is still adjusting their strategies on the reworked map. Despite this uncertainty, neither PRX nor RRQ have been banning Bind in their recent matches.
PRX’s newest player, something, pulled off a strategy no one could have predicted, and locked in Reyna on Bind.
Something is a Russian player who was picked up by the Singaporean organization just days before the start of the VCT Pacific League regular season. He is the only European player signed to a Pacific League team this season.
Reyna has only been seen one other time in VCT Pacific, all the way back at the beginning of April when Talon Esports went for a double-duelist composition featuring both Reyna and Jett. Despite this innovative strategic attempt, Talon would end up losing the map to DRX.
Casters Paperthin and Tasteless emphasized on the English broadcast of the PRX match that they were sure something’s choice to play Reyna was not a troll pick. PRX would try to the very end, they said.
In the past, there have been few players that have been able to really make Reyna work at the professional level. She struggles because she is a very hot or cold agent. Her abilities snowball off of her being able to get kills, so if you aren’t winning your gun fights it’s almost impossible to get any value from her kit. Her individual carry potential makes her a popular pick in ranked VALORANT, but she is rarely seen in VCT.
But if there were any team that would be able to make Reyna work in the Pacific League, it would of course be Paper Rex.
Something made the map seem like a piece of cake. His shots were precise, his positioning was calculated, and the team seemed to be clicking together to perfectly steamroll RRQ.
Though RRQ was able to make Pearl close, with a notable effort from xffero on Astra, PRX was just too dominant and took the match 2-0.
Unfortunately, RRQ needed a win in order to advance to the VCT Pacific playoffs. With this loss, they are tied with Korea’s Gen.G Esports in terms of points, but since Gen.G won the head-to-head match between the two teams, they win the tiebreaker.
RRQ will be a top contender in the Last-Chance Qualifier later this summer.
As far as PRX goes, it looks like something has officially made his transition into the roster. Though the team went through a bit of a rough patch during the regular season, they couldn’t have peaked at a better time. The only thing standing in their way is the continuous thorn in their side: DRX.
