VCT Masters Santiago - Preview of Nongshim RedForce
After taking the long way back, Nongshim RedForce now step onto the international stage as Pacific’s most intriguing surprise package.
CHILE – VALORANT Masters Santiago is here, and with it comes the first real international test of the year.
For VCT Pacific, three teams have made the trip, each carrying their own storyline, their own expectations, and, naturally, their own little cloud of intrigue. In this edition, the spotlight falls on Nongshim RedForce, Pacific’s first seed and perhaps the freshest face among the region’s representatives on the international stage. Consider this your opinionated guide to who they are, how they got here, and why they matter. Because if we are being honest, Nongshim RedForce have been far too delightful a surprise to ignore.
If you had asked most people at the start of the season which Pacific team would punch through and claim the first seed, NS would not have been the fashionable answer. There were shinier names, louder rosters, safer predictions even within Korea alone. And yet here they are, calmly ignoring everyone’s preseason assumptions and arriving in Santiago as Pacific’s top representative.
- Lee "Dambi" Hyuk-kyu
- Kim "Francis" Mu-bin
- Park "Ivy" Sung-hyeon
- Goo "Rb" Sang-min
- Jung "Xross" Hwan
- Kim "SilKanoN" Gyeong-min (Head coach)
- So "sungmin" Seong-min (Coach)
- Chae "yoman" Young-mun (Coach)
There is something especially satisfying about a team crashing the expected order of things. For anyone who has not been keeping up closely with the Pacific league, Nongshim RedForce were the champions of Ascension Pacific 2024 under the Sin Prisa Gaming name, earning promotion to the Pacific League. But despite that breakthrough, they were unable to defend their slot immediately and found themselves forced into another fight at Ascension Pacific 2025.
And it was hardly a glamorous return, even if many expected them to cruise their way back. NS had to grind through the lower bracket and take the long road, but they came through it just fine, securing the second Ascension slot and earning their place back in Pacific. They did it while throwing their newest and youngest member straight into a trial by fire, and while also having to move on from Yang "Persia" Zi-on. For a team that has already had to fight harder than most just to remain in the room, there is something very fitting about them now arriving as one of the region’s biggest surprises.
At the center of it all is Lee “Dambi” Hyuk-kyu, the beating heart of this roster and, frankly, one of the most entertaining players Pacific has produced in a while. You cannot talk about NS without talking about Dambi, because the entire team seems to breathe through the rhythm he creates. His Neon is obnoxiously good, and it is the kind of pick that starts becoming a personal brand of Dambi, like Jaccob "yay" Whiteaker with his Chamber or Trent "trent" Cairns with Tejo.
And honestly, the “one-trick Neon” label does not even land as an insult when you are this absurdly effective. Plenty of players would kill to be so elite on one agent that everyone in the lobby has to adjust to you. Dambi's movement on Neon is nasty, and the way he tears open space makes it feel like the game is being played at a different speed entirely, though some exceptions on some maps.
That, really, is what makes Nongshim RedForce so fun. They play with the kind of conviction that makes fast teams terrifying. Space disappears in an instant. Defensive setups start looking flimsy. And suddenly, before anyone has properly settled into the round, Nongshim are already in your face and making your crosshair placement feel inadequate. What is perhaps most impressive is that the inconsistency people once associated with some of the players has not really shown up this year. If that remains true, then this may very well be Dambi’s and Nongshim RedForce’s season.
Then there is Goo “Rb” Sang-min, who brings a very different kind of gravity to the roster. If Dambi is the chaos, Rb is the calm.
Before the current generation turned flexing into a fashionable badge of sophistication, Rb was already doing it back in the Vision Strikers and DRX days. He was the original APAC flex, the sort of player who seemed capable of doing everything and doing it properly. There was never anything flimsy or decorative about his versatility. Even after his DRX chapter, he still looked strong in China with Titan Esports Club, which only made his move to Nongshim feel all the more important.
Now, as the in-game leader, he gives this roster something every exciting young team desperately needs: an adult in the room. Rb plays what I would call deeply respectable VALORANT. He sees the game clearly, responds to situations with composure, and gives this team a layer of steadiness that prevents all that speed from becoming recklessness.
And then there is Jung “Xross” Hwan, perhaps the most intriguing detail in the whole setup. He has that distinctly Korean rookie trajectory, the comparison that comes to mind is Karon in 2024 with Gen.G, another young player who arrived and immediately looked far too comfortable for someone so new.
Xross has already put up impressive numbers as an initiator in his rookie season, which would be notable enough on its own. But what makes it more fascinating is the timeline behind it. He only turned 18 last November, and yet he had already been with this Nongshim RedForce setup long before the organization formally acquired the Sin Prisa Gaming roster. They kept him under contract for nearly two years until he was eligible to step onto the VCT stage. They looked at him and decided that he would be worth waiting for, even if it meant holding on until the 2026 VCT season without any guarantee that they would still exist in VCT Pacific by then.
I could go on about every player and every member of the coaching staff, but for now, this is probably what you need to know. The rest of Nongshim’s story, and whatever results come with it, is something the team can show for themselves on the server.
The double-duelist meta could not have arrived at a better time for NS either, especially for a team that has been one of the clearest drivers of this trend. In many ways, the stars are lining up for them. The only thing not yet fully on their side is experience.
To finish, here is one of those wonderfully nerdy little details to watch out for: Nongshim RedForce have never played Paper Rex in an official match, not even back in the SPG days. Which is frankly a bit rude of the universe, because it feels like exactly the kind of matchup people would want to see in Pacific but never happened throughout the entire Pacific league last year. Maybe Santiago gives us that meeting. Maybe we have to wait until Stage 1, where the two teams have landed in the same group.
The winners of each league’s Kickoff, including Nongshim RedForce, earned a direct spot in the Playoffs, skipping the Swiss Stage entirely. The remaining eight teams will battle through Swiss for the final four Playoffs spots.
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