FURIA crash out: BLAST Rivals Fort Worth group stage recap
The group stage of BLAST Rivals Fort Worth has now come to an end, and it’s fair to say we weren’t expecting what we just witnessed.
Vitality looked shaky as they struggled to overcome both FUT (with their coach coolio playing) and G2, whilst FURIA were eliminated after losses to GamerLegion and FaZe.
FUT fight valiantly in Group A
The big conversation going into Group A surrounded how FUT would handle the absence of their star man, lauNX.
They were eliminated in last place after losses to both Astralis and Vitality. They can be happy with their showing, though, they managed to take a map off the latter, defeating them on Dust2 13-11 and ending their win streak on the map.
Vitality did manage to recover, however, narrowly closing out the series with a 13-11 of their own on Nuke, and then edged past a resurgent G2 side who had demolished Astralis on day one.
Astralis themselves didn’t dwell on defeat, especially their captain, HooXi. He led by example in their elimination game versus FUT, closing out the 2-0 win with a solid 1.36 rating.
FURIA suffer consecutive upsets in Group B
It seems FURIA are still shaken by the announcement FalleN will be retiring at the end of the year, they crashed out of the competition after massive upset losses to GamerLegion and FaZe.
Given the gulf between FURIA and GamerLegion and the fact that FaZe are still a very unstable roster, it’s hard to tell which loss is the bigger upset, but FURIA will be particularly disappointed with the way they lost on map three against FaZe - a 13-3 drubbing on Nuke.
On a more positive note, NAVI continued their strong form throughout the group stage, taking down FaZe 2-0 on day one and following it up with a confident 2-0 against GamerLegion on day two.
makazze and w0nderful were particularly impressive, with the former coming out of the FaZe match with a 1.46 rating and the latter a monstrous 1.97 against GamerLegion.
The quarter-finals are set
In the quarter-finals, we’ll see FaZe look to continue their underdog run against G2, whilst GamerLegion will be looking to bounce back against Astralis.
The winner of G2 vs FaZe will then go on to play NAVI, whilst GamerLegion or Astralis will have the unfortunate task of trying to handle Vitality.
