Astralis bomb out 1-3 in IEM Cologne Major

Astralis' promising season has grinded to a halt as their loss to paiN confirmed their exit from the Cologne Major.

Astralis had been one of the more impressive teams with somewhat limited resources this year, but they were clearly overpowered by paiN on Overpass in their final map of Cologne - to the tune of zero T rounds.

Picking out any player from this disaster would be unfair, as none of them have been anything but unimpressive for the whole event, so instead we'll point out that snow was absolutely excellent in this series and a dominant force on both maps.

He had 13 more kills than anyone else on the server, and second place was an Astralis player, ryu. snow won this series for paiN.

G2 breezed past BIG for a pretty clean path into the second stage.

They were largely untroubled by BIG, who failed to muster up 13 rounds combined, never mind on either map. NertZ put up a 21-4 scoreline on Inferno, quite literally seven times more kills than poor JDC, and the Israeli was once again fantastic on Mirage.

Are G2 finally fulfilling their potential?

9z and BetBoom both made it through, with the former muscling past a lethargic TYLOO and the latter getting the better of a back-and-forth series with Monte.

d1Ledez wasn't expected to play this event, but in s1ren's absence he's been pretty solid, and this was the case once again - though it was Magnojez who really put up the big numbers.

Similarly, dgt put up a 40-19 scoreline against TYLOO. Hard to lose in those circumstances.

Legacy stayed alive by putting M80 out of contention in a very tight second map, while B8 knocked out MIBR despite a fantastic showing from insani.

insani banged out 55 kills in a loss, pipped only by s1zz1 who repaid a bit of the faith showed in him with 56 kills in a must-win series, including 25 in a tight game on Nuke.