Rex Regum Qeon overcomes Gen.G, lifts first-ever VCT Trophy

Facing a double map ban and a team that dominated them 2-0 just two days earlier, Rex Regum Qeon Rex Regum Qeon Asia-Pacific Rank #6 Monyet Cahya Nugraha xffero David Monangin Jemkin Maksim Batorov Kushy Bryan Carlos Setiawan crazyguy Ngô Công Anh toppled Gen.G Gen.G Korea Rank #1 Foxy9 Jung Jae-sung (정재성) Ash Ha Hyun-cheol (하현철) t3xture Kim Na-ra (김나라) Munchkin Byeon Sang-beom (변상범) Suggest Seo Jae-young (서재영) Karon Kim Won-tae (김원태) 3-1 to lift their first-ever trophy in the VCT Pacific Stage 1 grand final. The win is just RRQ's second-ever against Gen.G, and also its second-ever best-of-five win.

The victory clinches RRQ the Pacific Region's first seed at Masters Toronto, meaning they will qualify past the Swiss Stage straight into the playoffs.

Head coach Ewok , who, alongside xffero , has been on RRQ since the beginning of its VCT lifetime, lamented on the nearly three-year process it's taken for the team to lift its first trophy.

“It's been a really long journey, especially for me and xferro," he said. "We've been on the team for a long time. We've always promised that this is what we can do, so it really feels good to be able to achieve that.”

With the double map veto, Gen.G banned two of its worst maps this year in Fracture and Pearl. They also picked the map to begin the series on, picking Haven, followed by RRQ's Ascent, Gen.G's Lotus, RRQ's Icebox, and the decider of Split.

Gen.G chose to stick with a variation of their classic Haven composition, a rather unique one that sees them deploy Viper and Killjoy. Gen.G got out to a fast start on the attacker-sided, three-site map, winning the first five rounds on defense.

Things got rocky for Gen.G after entering halftime up 8-4, but an anti-eco and a run of three straight rounds to end the map got them a relatively clean 13-8 win on their map pick. Karon's 19/9 scoreline with a 1.61 rating and 243 ACS were the highest marks in the server.

The series moved to Ascent, which was considered to be the most winnable map of the series for RRQ. Both teams have enjoyed recent success on the map. In the playoffs, Gen.G had a 12-0 defense half to open their 2-0 win over BOOM Esports BOOM Esports Asia-Pacific Rank #4 dos9 Zhumagali Dastan Famouz Fikri Zaki Hamdani Shiro Hildegard Arnaldo NcSlasher Sheldon Andersen Chandra BerserX Rizkie Adla Kusuma . RRQ, on the other hand, had a 9-3 attack half in the fifth map of their 3-2 win over Paper Rex Paper Rex Asia-Pacific Rank #1 PatMen Patrick Mendoza Jinggg Wang Jing Jie f0rsakeN Jason Susanto d4v41 Khalish Rusyaidee something Ilya Petrov in the lower final. In the grand final, the map was full of plot twists. for both teams.

The clash of agents saw RRQ's more modern meta team comp overwhelm Gen.G's more traditional one. crazyguy 's Tejo utility helped RRQ dominate the ult orb economy, playing a big part in Jemkin 's Yoru ripping off four Dimensional Drift ultimate in the half. RRQ entered halftime with a 10-2 lead, kick-started by a 9-0 run to open the map.

RRQ won the pistol round to go up 11-2, and that seemed to seal their fate in a blowout map victory, but an ensuing Gen.G force buy turned the tide of the map. A run of eight straight Gen.G rounds threatened to turn the map on its head, but RRQ managed to pull away by the skin of their teeth with a 13-11 win. Attacking rounds outnumbered defending rounds 19-5 on the historically defender-sided Ascent.

While the defense-sided Ascent was more attacker-sided in this series, the attack-sided Lotus played out more defender-sided early on. Lotus, another trademark of Gen.G's map pool from its dream 2024 run, saw RRQ elect to start on attack. While the teams traded punches early on, finding themselves tied at 4 apiece, Gen.G entered halftime up 7-5.

Despite Gen.G's historical success on the map, RRQ was far and away the more dominant side. Duelist Jemkin , often with an Operator in hand, shut down C Mound with ease, and once he found success there, a setup on A or B was hard to predict for the attacking Gen.G. Compared to the 13-5 loss that Gen.G handed them in the upper final, the 13-9 RRQ win was, by all definitions, a huge upset.

Icebox, the map on which Gen.G defeated RRQ 13-8 in the upper final, was next. RRQ was thrashed 13-3 on the map by PRX in the lower final, but it remained to be seen whether or not RRQ had a read on the Korean side's play on the map. After giving up the first three rounds of the map to Gen.G, RRQ won six straight, already outdoing their mark of five attack rounds in the upper final. What could have been a dominant RRQ half was shut down by a Gen.G thrifty, bringing the teams to an even 6-6 halftime score.

The difference between the two teams was a knife's edge for the entirety of the second half, with no team leading by more than two rounds. A Gen.G timeout, followed by a dominant round, seemed to suggest that the Korean squad might pull away and force a fifth map, but it was just then that RRQ put their foot on the gas. The Indonesian side won three straight rounds to end the map, with the final round a befitting flawless one for a team that barely put a wrong foot down all day long.

Jemkin, a day removed from a 94-kill performance in five maps, put on another show, popping off for 89 kills in four maps. He was truly the tip of the spear for RRQ on the day, going 26/12 in first duels, all while sniping at an impressive 44% headshot percentage.

Monyet, after stops at Global Esports Global Esports Asia-Pacific Rank #25 UdoTan Go Kyung-won (고경원) Kr1stal Savva Fedorov Papi Federico Evangelista ban Joseph Seungmin Oh yoman Chae Young-moon (채영문) Deryeon Derrick Yee and Paper Rex, lifts his first-ever VCT trophy. A bit of a Pacific journeyman at this point in his career, he had his eyes set on his first international event with RRQ.

“It feels nice, but we still have more to do, you know?," he said. "It's nice to celebrate, we won the Stage 1 [trophy], but we still need to focus on more for Toronto.”

Qualifying for Masters Toronto and winning Stage 1 would have been an unrealistic dream just two months ago for crazyguy , but the in-game leader has called the shots for an RRQ team who now heads to Toronto, Canada as the Pacific region's top dog.

“I know my team is very good, so I just focus on reading the map, leading the guys, how to play, where to go," crazyguy said. "They just do the shooting job… This feels amazing. Last night, I couldn't even sleep. I slept one hour only last night."

The victory means that Rex Regum Qeon opens its VCT trophy cabinet, while also skipping the Swiss stage of Masters Toronto, seeding them directly into the playoffs. RRQ also earns five Championship points, going a long way to potentially lock in a spot at Champions 2025, while Gen.G takes home three points.