NIP and HEROIC both out: BLAST Premier Fall Showdown day one recap

BLAST Premier Fall Showdown 2024 finally started today and already on day one we have seen the eliminations of two of the highest ranking teams in the competition.

That was good news for both OG and AMKAL, however, it was those two sides that managed to take down HEROIC and NIP in an action-packed first day.

Before we look at those two games, let's first take a look at how one of the favourites, FaZe, took their first step towards BLAST Premier Fall Final 2024.

FaZe demolish Rare Atom

FaZe entered the Showdown as the highest ranked competition and they made light work of Rare Atom in a 2-0 victory.

13-8 was the score of map one, a dominant T side and a star performance from their captain karrigan saw them take Inferno.

Ancient was far closer in the early rounds, ropz showed his class to tie the score 3-3.

The Estonian then pulled off more heroics to give FaZe the lead at 6-5.

13-9 when it was all said and done, ropz struggled outside of his clutches and ended the map with just 11 kills. rain more than made up for him though, the big Norwegian closed out the map with 20.

New OG upset HEROIC

We then moved onto OG vs HEROIC where HEROIC's captain kyxsan was needed in the early rounds to clutch up on the A site.

That clutch mattered for little though as OG raced to a 9-2 lead. They then closed out the half 10-2 thanks to some impressive shooting from MoDo.

HEROIC tried to mount a comeback in the second half but it was too little too late as OG closed out Anubis 13-10.

MoDo kept up the big performances on map two, he picked up four with his trusty dualies to defend Ramp.

Then it was new OG man Chr1zN's turn, he picked up three Outside.

8-4 in favour of OG at the half, NertZ picked up two through a smoke to keep HEROIC in it in the second half pistol round.

However, once again it proved to not be enough for HEROIC, they were eliminated as OG closed out Nuke 13-11.

AMKAL stun both NIP and the casters

Finally, we got to NIP vs AMKAL... and it turned out to be one of the messiest BO3s we have ever witnessed.

Honestly, we're sorry you had to witness it too.

Despite AMKAL's dominance, they gifted NIP their first round on Inferno with whatever the hell happened here.

We're still scratching their heads as to how they managed to time it so poorly.

Oh, and if that round wasn't odd enough for you, this one happened just a few rounds later.

10-2 at the half, krad closed it out with this ace, which was actually pretty good considering everything else we'd watched.

With the map ending soon after at 13-3, we were hoping we would be treated to a much better second map, but sometimes, we don't get everything we ask for.

Just let this failed knife attempt from alex be an indication of everything to come.

Despite that knife failure, it was NIP's turn to be dominant on Ancient. They recorded a 10-2 half of their own and closed it out with another 13-3 scoreline, however, they will have been disappointed to not do it sooner considering how this 1v3 panned out.

At least REZ had fun, but we guess someone had to.

Finally, we got to Vertigo, where a scrappy first half drew NIP to a 7-5 lead going into their T side.

It wasn't all bad, we saw some pretty nice spray transfers in the second half.

REZ also picked up a nice 1v2, clutching up from the backlines as the rest of his team was shut down on B.

However, that didn't mean we were without any strangeness, r1nkle was fortunate not to end the life of one of his teammates as he seemingly forgot what team he was on in the final round of regulation.

Overtime proceeded to see all quality disappear from the game, topo- won perhaps the worst 1v2 we've ever seen to give AMKAL a 16-15 lead.

And the laughs kept coming a few rounds later as the pros very quickly devolved into gold novas.

Are we sure NIP and AMKAL actually played this game?

Just when we were actually completely losing our minds, AMKAL finally called time on the series as they took the map 19-17. We won't pretend we weren't happy to see the series come to a close, anymore of that and we're not sure we would have ever recovered.