The Big Five all kick off EPL S24 with wins
It was a good day for people who don't like upsets, with only PARIVISION's win over an arT-less Legacy really meeting the threshold.
Team Spirit, though, did manage to lose a map to ShindeN and went to round 24 on the second, before finally waking up and deleting the new boys on Mirage.
donk was predictably ridiculous and once more spared Spirit's blushes, dragging them to a win on Nuke with tN1R offering a hand as the rest of the team crumbled. He was the only reason Dust 2 was close, and his impact was typified by a mid lurk that led to four kills, decapitating a B player from way downtown.
ShindeN put up a good account of themselves, and we're definitely intrigued. ivz was the obvious stand-out, but despite the poor stats (especially a 3-15 Mirage) we enjoyed watching abizz, with his snappy aim and loose style. For two maps they went toe-to-toe with arguably the best team in the world, but fell apart on Mirage in an anti-climactic ending.
An encouraging start for the Argentinian team, and a let-off for Spirit.
One result that could be classed as an upset is NAVI smashing G2 - but G2 losing is never truly a surprise.
G2 picked up only eleven rounds and huNter- a measly eight kills as NAVI completely crushed them. w0nderful continues to baffle us - he's one of very few players who seems to get better the better the opposition is. He massacred G2 with 33 kills in 37 rounds, including a 17-3 scoreline on map two. Ridiculous.
b1t pulled off an extraordinary 4k on Cache in one of the most satisfying rounds of the event so far, becoming a turret on the site to destroy the attack on A site and put that game pretty much to bed, but he was barely needed on Inferno as w0nderful won the map on his own.
G2 confuse us and probably always will. NAVI had been in horrible form coming into this game, but G2 play in bizarro world, so it doesn't matter. A truly confuddling team where nothing ever makes sense.
We love them.
Falcons started very slow against TYLOO, with JamYoung almost powering his team to a map one win, but once Falcons woke up there was only ever going to be one winner. Someone on that team owes TeSeS a pint for dragging them out of the mud on Mirage, but NiKo was never going to lose Anubis. They'd clearly irritated him.
Legacy won map one convincingly without arT and had us believing for a minute, but PARIVISION struck back with an absolute paddling on Inferno. latto must have thought he'd gotten Legacy over the line on their T side of Ancient, but PARIVISION are still a nightmare to put away in these long games - and so they proved. FL1T and Jame rolled back the years to win in OT.
We're starting to believe in Aurora, who put up another convincing performance to put 9z to sleep. Jimpphat and XANTARES slaughtered the 9z offence on Dust 2, while a rare step-up from woxic was enought to put an end to the series in two maps.
If you looked at the scores of MOUZ vs M80 you might think it was a bit closer than it really was; M80 won both pistols on Cache, and went 4-0 up on both maps, but really struggled once the rifles come out, especially with torzsi's AWP. His multikill from the balcony on A of Cache was very pleasing to the eye, and a microcosm of everything that made him better than M80 today.
Vitality let 1win have six rounds. ZywOo went 37-11.
nafany had five kills. Bless him.
FURIA finished the day off with a huge comeback on Cache to deny BetBoom a decider. BetBoom were up 11-4 but failed to close out the map, and regretted it in OT.
KSCERATO is so, so, so good, man.
