Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Rank #1 mindfreak Aaron Leonhart Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov took a 2-1 victory over LOUD LOUD Brazil Rank #1 Quick Gabriel Lima saadhak Matias Delipetro Less Felipe de Loyola tuyz Arthur Andrade cauanzin Cauan Pereira in the upper semifinals of Valorant Champions 2023, reaching the upper final of the tournament with just one map loss.

Paper Rex have secured a top-three placement at an international Valorant tournament for the second time in a row. They had to traverse most of the lower bracket at Masters Tokyo, but have cruised through the upper bracket to equal their Masters placement.

Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games)

For a moment, though, it looked as if LOUD could have run away with the series.

They dropped their map pick, but a standout map from Less helped his team take a clean 13-2 on Paper Rex's Split. He accrued a 2.31 rating on the first half alone, which he ended with a 5.25 KDR and 424 ACS, and single-handedly put LOUD at the wheel heading into the Pearl decider.

“I think we fought until the end. I think the problem on Split was we just didn't hit our shots,” mindfreak said. “Every time they were executing A or executing B, we kind of knew they were going to go there, but somehow we just lost the trades.”

But overall, it wasn't meant to be.

The match came down to fine margins on the other two maps. LOUD let slip their Lotus pick — where they took down FNATIC FNATIC Europe Rank #1 Leo Leo Jannesson Derke Nikita Sirmitev Boaster Jake Howlett Chronicle Timofey Khromov Alfajer Emir Ali Beder , who are known for their dominance on that map — but Paper Rex were forced to take it in overtime 15-13, after a handful of chaotic rounds in the final stretches of the map.

Paper Rex brought out a double smoker and double duelist comp on Lotus. fRoD argued that something 's Jett and Jinggg 's Raze created trouble for his team, but ultimately pointed to retakes as a major concern.

“Their comp was strong for the kind of players they had,” the coach said. “Obviously we could have played those situations better but, at the end of the day, they had a really good game plan for some of those post-plant situations [to] create a lot of chaos for us. Credit goes out to them for how they played and their game plan, especially those types of situations.”

And on Pearl, Paper Rex took control of the map after tying it at 5-5. They recovered from a 4-1 deficit to a 7-5 halftime lead, and even looked poised for a 13-7 win. A 1v2 from cauanzin delayed PRX's triumph; they later won 13-10, rounding out the match.

Bouncing back from that deficit later proved the key to the match win, and their recovery started from a timeout where the discussion was rather simple.

d4v41 said that “most of it was alecks talking. He was telling us to calm down, we were shooting too fast and stuff, if I recall, right?”

“Yeah, I think I said that,” alecks replied. “We were playing the game, [but] we were overthinking everything. I told them to just go back to what we're good at and just make small changes if we had to. I think everyone locked in after that.”

“We were thinking about what they were going to do rather than what we're going to do instead,” d4v41 recalled. “So we went and paused, like, ‘okay, let's just play our game rather than thinking of what they [are] going to do to us.' And it worked out for us.”

Map three was where aspas finally woke up, as he picked up the Jett for the first time in the series. He dropped 27 kills, second only to something's 31 on Lotus, and averaged a 1.50 rating. He also drew first blood seven times; overall, aspas opened up 15 rounds for his team.

LOUD's run is far from over. They're in for a hot rematch against EDward Gaming EDward Gaming China Rank #1 ZmjjKK Zheng Yongkang (郑永康) nobody Wang Senxu (王森旭) Muggle Tang Shijun (唐时俊) CHICHOO Wan Shunji (万顺治) Smoggy Zhang Zhao (张钊) Haodong Guo Haodong (郭浩东) . It was in the lower bracket, where both teams now are, of Masters Tokyo that EDG eliminated the disgruntled VCT Americas champions with a quick 2-0.

“We're going to start studying [EDG]. There aren't many hours left, but we're prepared. We're going to fight for our lives,” fRod said. “we're going to take the whole day to watch them, make a game a plan and go.”

fRod pointed to communication issues and lack of patience or discipline after losing Lotus. In the press conference, saadhak explained how it's hard to stop Paper Rex's site takes and, despite good reads, how they struggled hitting shots against their opponents' chaotic style.

To make that game plan and fix those mistakes the two brains of LOUD pointed to, the team has just 24 hours.

“It seems to be unfortunate that losing ends up making you play so many matches in a row,” saadhak said of the lower bracket. “It's like losing penalizes you more than winning, but that's the way it was done. Tomorrow, we're going to try to restart and prepare in the best way we can, even if we have little time.

LOUD match EDG tomorrow, the final day Champions is played at the Shrine Expo Hall and after which Champions takes a three-day break.

Paper Rex, on the other hand, have a four-day break until they rematch DRX DRX Korea Rank #1 stax Kim Gu-taek (김구택) BuZz Yu Byung-chul (유병철) MaKo Kim Myeong-gwan (김명관) Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) BeYN Kang Ha-bin (강하빈) or Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses North America Rank #29 Derrek Derrek Ha NaturE Nicholas Garrison supamen Phat Le Apoth Vincent Le jawgemo Alexander Mor in the upper final.

“I think we need a break, just for a bit. And then, after that, we'll just hop right back into it,” alecks said.

Paper Rex returned to the top three with just one map loss, but they will not have an easy fight in the upper final. They will have to choose between DRX — who they went to a fifth map in the VCT Pacific final and beat in a close 2-0 in Tokyo — or Evil Geniuses, the team that eliminated them from Masters Tokyo in a 3-2 lower final bout and one of the hottest-looking rosters in Los Angeles.

“I want DRX to win, but I'd rather play EG because we always play DRX. I want to face EG,” Jinggg said.

His teammate, f0rsakeN , had a different idea.

“I really want to match up against EDG because they beat us in Tokyo last time.”