Cloud9 outclass ENCE in opening game at BLAST Premier World Final
Cloud9 began their assault on the BLAST Premier World Final trophy with aplomb as they cut down ENCE 2-0.
ENCE never really got started on Ancient and though they reached map point first on Overpass, found themselves losing in overtime as electroNic went wild.
gla1ve's team will now drop down to the lower bracket to face the loser of NAVI vs Vitality, while Cloud9 will play the winner tomorrow for a shot at the semi-finals.
A steamroller CT side
Cloud9 flew out of the blocks with an absurdly dominant CT side on Ancient.
Though HObbit told BLAST.tv that "it wasn't an easy map to be honest, there was a lot of close rounds and a lot of mind games", it's hard to agree as an outsider. Cloud9 found themselves 11 of the first 12 maps and picked up a ten-round lead at the half, converting every man advantage into a round.
Credit: Michal KonkolMuch has been made of Cloud9's usage of the AWP, but they only needed two AWP kills from Perfecto and one from Ax1Le en route to a 13-4 win.
"We stepped up individually, and our gameplan just worked for us," HObbit explained to us.
A lot tighter
"On the T side, our plan just didn't work," admitted HObbit, in complete contradiction to the first map.
Five rounds on the T side of Overpass isn't quite as bad as he made it sound, and HObbit did admit that five rounds was "enough, but not a lot". Cloud9 made it work well enough, though, limiting ENCE to the same amount of T rounds, largely thanks to some vintage electroNic gameplay.
The legendary Russian picked up 32 kills in 29 rounds, including multiple massive multikill spraydowns in big rounds, and bought enough time for Boombl4 to wake up and start picking off ENCE players around the A site with the AWP.
Credit: Michal KonkolHe was helped by Ax1Le, who had a terrific series, but electroNic dragged Cloud9 to overtime and carried on multifragging.
ENCE were far better on Overpass, and NertZ consistently found openings as the cloaked dagger towards B, but after losing two map points it felt like they'd run out of steam.
HObbit agreed: "Our rotations and communication were not on the best level which is why it was a close game, but we adapted, and once it went to overtime we were very confident".