Heroic will take the headlines for a dominant victory over FaZe, but plenty more has happened beneath the surface here in round one of the Swiss System of the Legends Stage.
That said, we'll start with the headline.
Heroic show some championship form
cadiaN's boys completely took over and smashed FaZe Clan 16-7 to begin their assault on the trophy in style.
Led by their charismatic leader, Heroic put up a flawless 8-0 T-side to turn an 8-7 half into a 16-7 win on Inferno, as FaZe faded completely.
"We knew it was a tough opponent in FaZe Clan and drawing them in the first match is a bit like "ah, what can you do?" but we managed to win comfortably", TeSeS told BLAST.tv.
Stephanie Lindgren"We just pulled away on the T side, Casper [cadiaN] called really well", which is about as accurate a summation as anyone could muster.
You won eight rounds in a row on the T side. Indeed he did call really well.
For FaZe, they will fall into the 0-1 bracket, losing their first BO1 of the Major cycle, but one would never dream of writing them off and coming all the way back.
"It feels fine, I think, we didn't play our game today" shrugged rain, with the coolness of someone who knows what it takes to win a Major. "People are just a little low energy I think, we have to go home and talk about it."
rain, at least, didn't seem too stressed.
The full Monte
Monte are full of surprises, to the point where we probably shouldn't be surprised any more when they take a big scalp.
And yet, it's still bizarre to see them cut down FURIA who could only muster seven rounds.
"Every game is hard," KSCERATO told us. "BO1 is hard, because economy comes into play, otherwise if you fuck up..." he trailed off.
"We need to be smart about the game."
Stephanie Lindgrensdy has continued his revolution away from NAVI and died just nine times in the map, while BOROS and kRaSnaL kept proving quite why Monte are so scary.
"This is how we were supposed to play in the previous stage!" beamed sdy. "The pressure came off of our shoulders".
It has to be worrying for FURIA to see arT as the only positive member of the team, with yuurih only collecting four frags - they'll need to wake up quickly or face an 0-2 game tomorrow.
Hometown advantage
Vitality picked up a very impressive win over potential championship rivals G2 in large part due to a ridiculous 1v3 from ZywOo.
It went all the way to round 29 despite a 30 bomb from the aforementioned marksman, with m0NESY topping the team for G2.
That's an AWP duel we'd like to see again. And again.
Michal KonkolhuNter- told BLAST.tv that "I think we didn't deserve to lose, honestly" and believes they should have won the last round in particular. It's hard to argue with the latter, but ZywOo might argue with the former.
"I'm just happy we managed to come [out] on top", a particularly excited Spinx told BLAST.tv. We're sure the double entendre wasn't deliberate.
Move like water
Team Liquid won six maps in a row to qualify for the Legends Stage and showed no signs of letting that go just yet against 9INE.
The slow start NAF had in the first game of the Challengers Stage is long forgotten as he racked up well over 100 ADR and 25 kills in 25 rounds.
Stephanie LindgrenoSee too had a part to play with a huge 1v3 clutch to close out a devastating nine-round T half.
"We definitely feel more and more that we're playing like we used to", spoke an enthused oSee. "It actually worked out for us that we were able to play through the Challengers Stage".
El not-so-Classico
Back in the day, fnatic vs NiP would have been a headline game, packed with the best Swedish players ever to touch the game and guaranteed drama.
There were only three Swedes in the server, but it did produce a very enjoyable game - not least for those supporting fnatic.
Michal KonkolKRIMZ was quiet, though, and instead it was mezii leading from the front with 27 in 27 rounds with roeJ following not far behind. For NIP, their stars largely went missing and they relied on Aleksib to try and drag them through.
"We just had a very sloppy start, we didn't hear each other but hopefully we'll bounce back later. We didn't listen, we didn't do what we'd written down," a despondent headtr1ck told BLAST.tv
NIP fall into the 0-1 bracket, with some other huge names, while fnatic continue their dominance in the Swiss system.
Into The Breach can't reach Apeks
UK's home team found their match in Apeks, who had jkaem to thank for an absolute monster performance.
31 kills and 135 ADR saw Into The Breach struggle to contain a rampant offence with Apeks picking up 12 T rounds on Mirage.
"It was probably the easiest opponent we could have gotten," said jkaem to BLAST.tv. Easy for you to say; you just picked up 31 kills.
Michal KonkolFor the few UK heads following, it's fair to say it wasn't the encouraging start they would have wanted - and it might not get any easier, judging by the look on CYPHER's face when he realised they're going to meet FaZe next.
His face betrayed his own uttered words of "long day, but winnable".
"Our CT side wasn't the greatest, at all," he told BLAST.tv. That must be that classic English understatement.
CYPHER went on to bemoan the 5v3s and 4v2s lost, maintaining that it "would have been a lot closer" had they not lost the man advantage rounds.
Easy for ENCE
ENCE made light work of Bad News Eagles - perhaps not underestimating them in the way juanflatroo had hoped in his earlier interview.
Bad News Eagles won a few big rounds and brought it back after a slow start, but ENCE were always in charge as Maden continued his great form, and NertZ swung the hammer down on the Eagles.
Michal KonkolThe Israeli told BLAST.tv "I've never won versus Bad News Eagles, and finally win against them. Every time I played them with Endpoint they beat us!"
He did agree with juanflatroo that they should never underestimate them, and was clearly radiating happiness at getting one over on his own boogeyman.
Born to win (opening games)
NAVI pushed past GamerLegion as they began to outline their credentials for the whole thing.
The rifle duo of b1t and electronic who were so dominant when NAVI won the Major both showed up in spades to put GL away.
Stephanie LindgrenA very composed npl told us: "No, it wasn't a hard game, we just managed to win some clutches and we were just better at aim today".
Fair enough, we suppose. No messing around.
GamerLegion drop into the 0-1 bracket, but that shouldn't worry them too much given what happened in the Challengers Stage.