Upset wins, 13-0s, and dominant performances: BLAST Open London day one recap
BLAST Open London is now underway and its kicked off with an incredible day of action.
We've seen huge upsets, 13-0s, and exciting debuts, so how about we get straight into the action?
Vitality avoid a scare against M80
Kicking off the day we had Vitality vs M80, a game everyone would have expected to easily go the way of the BLAST.tv Austin Major champions.
Wrong.
Vitality were stunned in the opening map as M80 put together a solid T side, securing a 9-3 lead by the time the second half began. Lake, Swisher, and HexT were the standout players, helping M80 easily convert that lead into a 13-3 win.
However, there's a reason why Vitality are the Major champions, and although recent results may have brought their strength into question, they reminded everyone what they were capable of in the following two maps.
13-7 on Dust2 and 13-10 on Inferno, they rallied around flameZ and ZywOo, coming back into the series they were always expected to win.
Photo: Stephanie LindgrenGamerLegion see off VP in two
Our next series didn't feature a huge upset, but we did get to see a GamerLegion that was back to their best as VP struggled to match the trio of REZ, Tauson, and PR.
Kicking off with a 13-7 on Dust2, Perfecto's struggles since joining VP continued, he went 8-15 as both he and fame suffered on the CT side.
VP put up a bit more of a fight on Ancient, they managed two more rounds in the 13-9 defeat, but an impressive performance from Tauson made GamerLegion's win inevitable, with the Dane picking up a monstrous 26 kills.
FaZe 13-0 ECSTATIC after losing map one
FaZe made waves recently by benching EliGE for jcobbb, and their first game together almost ended in disaster as ECSTATIC managed to take Overpass 13-10 thanks to one of the strangest scoreboards you'll ever see.
However, the experience of FaZe came up big in the next map, they took Dust2 13-0 after a 12-0 T side that featured an absolutely incredible showing out of frozen. The Slovakian fragger was having a great time on the map as he went 20-3, and it looked like he was enabling his teammates to have some fun, too.
FaZe closed out the series on Inferno, but it wasn't quite as easy as Dust2. 16-13 after both teams recorded 7-5 T halves, broky shone, with 26 kills to his name when it was all said and done.
NAVI assured versus fnatic
With NAVI taking a surprise defeat to 3DMAX at the Esports World Cup, they were in need of a solid win to lift their spirits and kick off their Open campaign.
They got that win, taking down fnatic 2-0 despite fnatic threatening to pull off an impressive comeback on map one.
9-3 down at the half, fnatic looked solid on their CT side thanks to KRIMZ, but the round deficit was too large, and NAVI managed to close it out 13-10 after a run of seven straight round losses.
On map two, Mirage, it was NAVI's turn for a dominant CT side. Down 8-4 at the half thanks to a solid CT half from fnatic, NAVI completely shut them out, closing out the map and series 13-8 as makazze and Aleksib starred.
