Despite making a change over the off-season, Vitality remained one of the favourites to qualify straight for BLAST Premier Fall Final without the need of the Gauntlet.
Handed a favourable group where they would face off against NIP, Evil Geniuses, and Complexity, it looked likely they would go on to do so if not for a bad day at the office for their team against NIP in the Group Final.
Sent down to the Gauntlet and with no room for error, Vitality would have to face BIG to qualify for Fall Final, and having beaten them in two maps, have now booked their place in Copenhagen's Royal Arena in November.
An intriguing prospect given their signing of flameZ, Vitality's newboy couldn't have asked for a better start than the starring role he had in his team's demolition job over EG in the first match of Fall Groups.
A game in which EG failed to reach double figures in rounds won across two maps, the BLAST.tv Paris Major winners made light work of the NA team on Overpass and Vertigo.
Vitality's next game was even more dominant. Facing off against the other NA side in Group A, Complexity, they restricted the NA side to just seven rounds across the best of three as Spinx crushed the Complexity attack in a 16-1 Inferno victory.
With Complexity then going on to choke against NIP in Group A's Consolidation Final, it set Vitality up for a Group Final against the Swedish squadron, a game that they were expected to win comfortably.
However, in Counter-Strike, things often aren't that simple, and a rare off day for Vitality saw them lose to NIP 2-0. A match characterised by the undeniably overperforming Brollan, his 50 kills helped secure NIP two very close games in which only ZywOo and Spinx had much to say on the side of Vitality.
Now sent down to the Gauntlet bracket, Vitality's second place in Group A would protect them and require them to only play one game in order to qualify for Fall Final. With BIG beating OG, it was the new look German side that would need to pull off another upset in order to deny that.
A return to form for Vitality, ZywOo played well on both maps to finish with 45 kills. The rest of the team performed well behind him, and only flameZ went negative across the team, with Magisk and Spinx both ending on 34 kills.
16-11 on Anubis and 16-8 on Inferno, BIG fought hard and mantuu even topfragged the series with 52 kills of his own. A solid debut from the Polish AWPer on his new team, he still couldn't do enough to prevent the Major champions from booking their rightful place at Fall Final.
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