Photo by Colin Young-Wolff/Riot Games
As if getting aced by the opposing team in a one-sided third map in your international VALORANT debut wasn’t bad enough, BOOM Esports out of Indonesia managed to hand five free kills to OpTic’s Austin “crashies” Roberts in the most amazingly comical of manners.
BOOM and OpTic were facing each other in the third map of their opening Group B series at VCT Champions 2022 today after BOOM escaped with an overtime win on Breeze and OpTic took care of business on Bind. Early on in Fracture, OpTic looked in control, propelled by a typically splendid Chamber performance by yay, who had 15 kills against only three deaths after 10 rounds.
The best ACE of my CAREER!!!!! 😂😂 https://t.co/0fWUDc2ToT
— OpTic crashies (@Crashies) September 1, 2022
In round 11m though, crashies delivered the highlight of the series. BOOM stacked up outside A main with a half-buy, but a wave of OpTic utility convinced them to go elsewhere. Fearing a push from Marved, who indeed was aggressively pushing out of B main, BOOM made the fateful decision to all attempt to cross over to the attacker bridge via the zipline.
But this decision couldn’t have been more poorly (or perfectly) timed. All five players began to slowly cross the zipline right into the waiting crosshairs of crashies, who had pushed from B Tower through Arcade and Bench all the way to the attacker bridge. With a terrifying smile on his face, crashies picked off all five BOOM members one by one, sending their bodies (and even the finisher effect) falling into the abyss.
The highlight sent the casters, viewers, and virtually all of VALORANT Twitter into an absolute frenzy. In the replay, his OpTic teammates can be seen laughing and screaming in delight, and even one of the BOOM players can be seen cracking a smile. Caster Brennon “Bren” Hook said, “I don’t think we will ever witness anything like that again in VCT history,” and he very well may be right. Tragically, there was no crowd for this all-time highlight.
Needless to say, BOOM were boomed and weren’t able to muster a single round for the rest of the map. OpTic took Fracture 13-3 and the series 2-1. And no one will ever forget this truly iconic ace.