The second week of the newly-franchised VCT is well underway, with the Americas league finally also joining in on the action. With plenty of new faces and teams from all over the world continuing to make their debuts, today’s Pacific league matches featured one highly anticipated contest between two big names in the region with lots of experience.
Team Secret, from the Philippines, and Paper Rex, from Malaysia and Singapore, are both teams with a history of big performances on the international stage. In 2022, both teams attended multiple international Masters and Champions events representing what was formerly the APAC region.
Today’s first faceoff between these two squads was a lengthy affair, eventually ending with Team Secret taking a close 2-1 victory.
In addition to their past experience, these two rosters are some of the few across the world that made it through the VCT franchising debacle without any major changes. Despite this, both rosters have looked shaky so far in 2023.
At LOCK//IN, professional VALORANT’s first big tournament before the start of the regular season, PRX’s coach alecks was open about scrims looking rough for the team. They performed underwhelmingly, with Team Secret suffering a similar fate in Brazil.
But today’s match was definitely played on a higher caliber. It looked like both teams have improved their form since the LOCK//IN tournament, and their signature styles started to peek through once again.
The main issue that PRX has faced, not just this year but throughout a large part of their time together as a team, has been their consistency and team coordination. They play in a very chaotic style, which shocked internationally when they first appeared on the big stage. These days, this playstyle doesn’t seem to be working out as well for them.
Despite doubts from desk analysts about another chaotic strategy, PRX locked in a double-duelist composition on Haven. F0rsakeN was set to enter the map on Yoru, a pick we have seen from him before. Though this pick might seem risky at first, Yoru’s kit actually can work very well on a three-site map like Haven.
Starting off the first map, PRX looked uncoordinated. TS were able to get themselves a nice 5-1 lead before PRX found any footing at all on their attack side.
DubsteP in particular was the stand-out player for TS. If you’ve ever wondered how to effectively play Killjoy, DubsteP’s performance on Haven is a great place to start. He never pushed too far or took engagements he didn’t have to, always making sure he was the last player alive for his team. Even then, he clutched up.
PRX got lucky and capitalized on an age-old VALORANT combo: rushing and the Stinger. After this one thrifty round, the momentum suddenly turned in the other direction.
Despite a strong start from TS, PRX took Haven 13-11.
After a strong performance from DubsteP, that still resulted in a loss for TS on map one, another player from the team decided it was his time to shine on Fracture.
Invy pulled himself forward, excelling on Breach, and TS built themselves a nice lead in the first half.
Yet, noticeably stoic on the other side of the stage sat Benkai, waiting to instruct his team. He looked focused and collected as his team began to snowball their momentum in the second half, exactly how they had done just one map earlier.
But this time, one man stood in their way. BORKUM made sure that TS didn’t give anything away this time, and pushed TS to a 13-11 win after a well-executed map on Fracture, narrowly escaping overtime.
PRX once again began the third map with a series of sloppy mistakes. These types of rounds are not uncharacteristic of the team, as a chaotic playstyle means mistakes can sometimes appear even more glaring.
In true PRX fashion, Jinggg decided it was his turn to pop out an ace to turn the tides once again.
This back-and-forth momentum continued throughout the second half of Split, which ended up being an extremely close contest. Suddenly both teams were playing more carefully, with PRX even backing off completely on some rounds to save weapons.
However, despite getting a bit of a grip back on the map, the biggest difference between these two teams was eventually staring PRX in the face as they lost Split 13-10.
TS pulled through with the win on Split today because of one thing: consistency.
PRX has always been a chaotic team, but their match today against another team from their own region shows that sometimes, consistency and a calmer playstyle is just better. TS is slowly building a name for themselves as a roster with consistent, linear progression, enhanced by their new coach Warbirds.
TS will have their next match next week against Korea’s Gen.G, a team that has been looking like they could have future superstars on their roster. PRX will play against T1, another Korean team.
