Aurora put the pressure on Team Falcons - IEM Krakow

Sometimes it pays to stick, and sometimes it pays to twist; and Falcons are finding out that twisting might have been better this time around.

Aurora decided to make the change, and though it was an uninspiring move on paper, it’s been enough so far to at least bag them a win over a Falcons team who are treading water.

In fact, it was the aforementioned ‘uninspiring’ signing who dragged Aurora over the line with 52 kills, and Soulfly was the only reason they were even in the game on Mirage with multiple big holds on the CT side.

Aurora picked into Anubis and won it cleanly, which presents a bit of an issue for Falcons as they’ve now lost both games on the map, and need to start making people think they can play it, or, well, learn to play it. It’s only a small sample size, but they’ve been smacked by Vitality and beaten easily by Aurora so far, so it’s not looking good, chief.

Two teams guaranteed playoffs today, with G2 narrowly avoiding the knockout blow from FUT and swinging back with a haymaker of their own to ensure at least a top six finish.

This was a great game to watch and did little to dissuade anyone away from the FUT hype train, but it also solidified G2 as a genuine top 5 contender. They’ve ‘only’ beaten The MongolZ and FUT so far, but neither are pushovers and the most recent win will probably only look more impressive in a month’s time.

HeavyGod had had a muted first map, but he was terrific on the second, and colossal on the third and proved once again why he deserved to be in the top 20 last year. Were it not for him, FUT might’ve found themselves in the headlines once more.

lauNX had 28 kills on Mirage himself, and looked after map one to be making a case for himself as the player of the match, but somehow from there only registered 14 more kills on the series.

This was an all-out brawl, and well worth a rewatch if you missed it.

zont1x had one of the strangest series you’ll ever see against NAVI as Spirit won 2-0; after starting 2-17, he ended the series 34-27 with a revival in OT on Mirage, and an absolute rampage on Dust 2, finishing map two 22-5. We have no idea how this happened. He just flicked a switch and turned into a super soldier.

How did they get to OT with zont1x playing so poorly on Mirage? It’s Team Spirit. Use your imagination. donk ended the map with 37 kills, 117 ADR and a 1.95 rating. He had 11 multikills.

Sometimes the ‘donk carry’ narrative is a bit forced, but if there’s ever been a player it was actually fair to use for it, it’s him. This was a carry job, and Spirit are in the playoffs.

MOUZ, perhaps unsurprisingly, 2-0’d NRG in a pretty simple series that saw NRG create a bit of excitement, before the big brother came in and smushed their sandcastle to smithereens. They weren’t bad, but the class of MOUZ showed through in the end.

PARIVISION's run came to an abrupt end, and truthfully, should have been done sooner. Astralis had their number pretty hard in map two, but seemed to completely lose their nerve and drop the map in OT from a 10-2 lead. Astralis quickly made up for it with a dominant map three, so no harm done.