‘We came from a region regarded as minor’: Paper Rex secures Singapore's first-ever 2nd place finish at Valorant Masters Copenhagen

This team has proven that Southeast Asia's esports scene isn't some musty fossil — it's a full-blown dinosaur, alive and with bite.

In the recent grand finals of Valorant Masters in Copenhagen that took place on Sunday (July 24), Paper Rex (PRX) managed to secure second place, just short of the championship title.

This Masters segment is part of Valorant Champions Tour, organised by Riot Games, and sees teams from across the globe vie for entry to the Champions tournament itself.

It's also the first time that PRX clinched second place in the Valorant Masters tournament.

Commentator Jessica "Jess" Bolden, also an award-winning esports analyst, said: "Apac as a region has never, in tactical FPS (first-person shooter) history, made it to this point (the finals) — and that is unreal."

Against FunPlus Phoenix (FPX), whose players are considered the cream of the crop in the Emea (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, PRX faced a team with a playstyle that was the polar opposite of theirs.

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PRX's aggressive playstyle, best described by Bolden as a "controlled chaos", was the fan-favourite due to the high-octane action they would provide fans with during matches.

In stark contrast, FPX played calmly and methodically, patiently waiting for PRX's overextensions and punishing them accordingly.

FPX's composed and calculative playstyle steamrolled PRX on their first map, resulting in PRX's loss of 3-13 on Bind, one of Valorant's maps and also alleged to be PRX's strongest map.

Matches are played on various maps with different geography, affecting the way players approach map control and how they use their characters' abilities to take on enemy teams.

Although PRX looked shaky after that loss, they finished the second map, Icebox, with a 13-7 victory — including an ace (when a single player kills the entire enemy team of five players) by Singaporean player Wang "Jinggg" Jingjie.

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Fracture, the third map played, saw the scores flipped as PRX lost 7-13 in a back-and-forth between the two teams.

But PRX's victory on the fourth map, Haven, evened out the match wins and both teams went head-to-head on their fifth and final map: Breeze.

Although all the matches up till this point were close, this last game was the closest of them all.

In what could have been PRX's 10th point on Breeze, FPX's Dmitry "Suygetsu" Ilyushin clutched the round with four kills, ending the game with a 9-13 loss for PRX. 

[embed]https://twitter.com/ValorantEsports/status/1551293676512370688[/embed]

Despite failing to secure a victory that was almost in their grasp, the Singapore-based team isn't disheartened.

The 25-year-old team captain, Singaporean Benedict "Benkai" Tan, said: "We've really done more than we ever thought we could. We've exceeded our expectations already… It's such an honour for us because we came from a region regarded as minor.

"We've more than proved that shouldn't be the case anymore."

PRX previously achieved fourth place at Valorant Masters Reykjavik in April.

The team will move on to Valorant Champions, the largest tournament in the world for Valorant, which is expected to take place in Instanbul in September this year. 

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khooyihang@asiaone.com