Paper Rex is one step closer to a finals appearance after forcing Fnatic to the lower bracket at Masters Copenhagen.
Paper Rex fought hard to take away Fnatic’s map pick of Ascent to start the best-of-three series up 1-0 over the former EMEA Challengers 2 champions. The Asia-Pacific team has made several appearances at different Masters events throughout the last year but has yet to get above fourth at an international event. But, after breaking Fnatic’s win streak since bringing on Emir “Alfajer” Ali Beder, Paper Rex has secured at least top four. They now await the winner of DRX and OpTic Gaming to determine who will make the grand final.
Fnatic tied with Paper Rex 6-6 at the half but lost control in the second half and allowed Paper Rex to stack rounds and make the score 12-9. Fnatic fought back two more rounds before falling 13-11 to Paper Rex and avoiding overtime. Aaron “mindfreak” Leonhart put on a master class with Astra and walked away with a 2.0 KD with close to 30 kills and just 14 deaths by the end of the map.
Fnatic continued to struggle on Bind, which had been picked by Paper Rex, who took the lead on the defense 7-5 before taking off on the attack to grow the lead to 9-5. Fnatic’s usual star player Nikita “Derke” Sirmitev struggled to get things going on Raze early on, allowing Paper Rex to take off with the map. Meanwhile, the double duelists for Paper Rex in Wang “Jinggg” Jing Jie and Jason “f0rsakeN” Susanto were enough to pull them over the line and secure another 13-11 win.
