With the Group Stage over and the Gauntlet now underway, day nine saw us begin to see the first teams that will have to battle their way through the Showdown in order to make it to Fall Final.
Complexity became it's first victims as they were brutalised by the Danes of Astralis, while OG fell to BIG in a tight game between the two sides.
Two sides that had experienced different times at the event thus far, Astralis had been disappointing in their previous two games, suffering defeats at the hands of both NAVI and BIG. As for Complexity, despite being bolstered by the arrival of EliGE, it was a mixed bag in terms of results. With a win and a loss against NIP, as well as another loss against Vitality, their match with Astralis left them with a point to prove.
Unfortunately for the North American side, Astralis also had a point to prove, and even from the map veto, it seemed they were confident in doing so. casle and blameF jumped for joy as the veto was finalised, and the reason why soon became clear as blameF would go on to dominate the series.
21-14 on Vertigo, device going 27-12 was the only reason why blameF didn't top frag on Astralis's map pick. The NA team started strong as they raced to a 7-2 lead, but they were powerless to halt the 16-12 final scoreline as the two superstars began fragging out.
Astralis carried through their momentum on the CT side into Overpass. A 12-3 half, blameF finished the half 20-5 and with a monstrous 140 ADR. He didn't stop there though, in the five rounds that were played in the second half, he picked up a further seven kills and only died once. 27-6 across the 20 rounds played, his complete shut down of Complexity sent them packing 16-4.
Two new teams coming into the event, fans and analysts alike have been quietly quite impressed by what OG and BIG have shown so far. Two teams expected to struggle, they have done themselves proud and shown potential to cause teams real issues in the future.
A close game between the two, it was OG who drew first blood as they took Mirage 16-11. nexa struggled with just 6 kills, but the other four members of his squad all picking up over 20 gave BIG very little chance to get into the map on their T side.
BIG battled back on Overpass through anothe rstarring performance from Krimbo. 28-17, the young German showed once again why he has become one of the best players in all of Counter-Strike as BIG picked up 11 rounds on their CT side. Narrowly avoiding overtime, BIG completely halted the momentum OG had built up from winning map one and being 10-5 up after the first half of map two.
With momentum now firmly on the side of BIG, they went on to win Ancient 16-11. Former BIG player k1to tried his best to stop them, his 25-20 performance being the best we've seen from him in an OG shirt so far, but it wasn't enough as tabseN and s1n combined for 57 kills to send OG packing.
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