Day one of Showdown saw little in the way of massive surprises, but plenty for fans of top quality Counter-Strike.
Europe kicked off with a back-and-forth affair as OG pushed past NIP on Mirage, powered by a superb performance from flameZ. The Israeli dropped 27 kills and well over 100 ADR on the way to a huge map one victory, filling the gap left by degster’s usual dominant performances.
degster was a late drop-out, and his place was filled by smooya - and though he’s not a bad player by any means, few are as good as degster.
NIP hit back, though, picking up maps two and three with barely a scratch. The Ninjas won eight of the nine CT rounds played on Vertigo, and six of seven on Overpass. Brollan was back to his brutal best, especially on map three, as he sliced through OG time and time again.
Cloud9 put out the Flames
Cloud9 breezed past Copenhagen Flames in game two in somewhat expected fashion. The ESL Pro League finalists were challenged on Ancient, but the three-headed beast was too much for the Flames to handle. Ax1Le, sh1ro and HObbit were all terrific on both sides of the map.
It was HObbit who completely took over on Vertigo, though, putting up a 22-5 T side with 152.1 (!) ADR. Cloud9, unsurprisingly, took 12 T rounds in that time, and closed out in no time.
The first game of the American half of Showdown began with an all-Brazilian derby, as paiN eventually overcame a tough MIBR side in map three.
A phenomenal CT side on Anubis, and zevy in particular, put paiN in a superb position to finish off MIBR and steal their map pick. Of course, they did. Nuke wasn’t quite as easy.
paiN squandered two map and match points in regulation as MIBR fought all the way to OT, double OT and eventually edged out their Brazilian brothers on Nuke. Of the forty rounds played, insani collected the opening pick in nine of them. Solid effort.
He was unfortunately powerless to stop paiN on Vertigo though; even as MIBR won six straight to close out their T half, their slow start to both halves was a mountain too insurmountable, and paiN romped to victory on the T side of Vertigo.