BLAST Bounty Day Five Recap: Liquid in flow state

BLAST Bounty has started its second phase today, with winners qualifying for the LAN phase in Malta.

Consequently, the games today and tomorrow are even bigger for the surviving underdogs. This is the opportunity for these lower-ranked teams to get on LAN and gain some VRS points. That’s probably why we had mostly pretty close games today, hard-fought at the very least.

With one notable exception shaping today's title, but we will get to them. First, we have to tackle the day's opener:

FaZe 2-1 DENDELE

Was anyone else constantly thinking of Ousmane Dembélé? Just us?

Sorry, back to the topic at hand: FaZe are seriously back. No, we’re not overreacting; you’re underreacting. JBOEN is the second coming of KennyS; the Danish AWPer went 19-1 on the series opener, Nuke. 19-1, nineteen and one. Thanks to him, FaZe absolutely steamrolled the Brazilians on their own map pick. Easy work for the baby, baby GOAT.

Okay, fine, we’ll be serious for a moment

Not because we want to, but because Mirage didn’t go quite as well. JBOEN had a poor showing on map two, and it was felt on the CT side. DENDELE had an easy time dismantling the site holds and reading what FaZe were doing, some obvious signs of teething problems for this roster under Twistzz. Credit to DENDELE, though: three of their players had 18 kills, including GAFOLO, who also called one hell of a map.

Not to be outdone, though, Twistzz took Cache personally.

This isn’t us being silly; FaZe are probably the best Cache team we’ve seen so far. Especially their T-side is extraordinary. Cache has been by far the most CT-sided map at Bounty, more so than even Nuke. Yet, FaZe, after a 6-6 CT half of their own, won seven out of eight rounds in the second half as Ts. It’s a testament to Twistzz especially, because much like his Brazilian counterpart, he fragged out whilst calling. He’s been everything on this map we could’ve hoped for given his past.

Given DENDELE beat FURIA on Cache yesterday, this was a huge result for FaZe. Now let’s see if they can keep it up on LAN.

Team Liquid 2-0 G2

Somehow one of the most comfortable wins of the event.

Liquid means business with this roster, and we’re big fans. Everyone seems rejuvenated now under JT, but one man especially seems like a fresh man, EliGE. He was even seen smiling today; that’s equivalent to a double rainbow sighting. What we will say is that while EliGE is the obvious winner, malbs has secretly been a huge winner as well.

You don’t have to look further than the opening map to see why.

This is the second time now that he’s been exceptional on Anubis; the same goes for EliGE. malbs on mid, and EliGE on A seems to be paying off really well. Off the back of it, Anubis has become a home pick for TL now. It makes sense; they were all comfortably positive rating-wise, so when your stars shine, and you’re all comfortable on it, why not?

Though somehow Mirage was even better.

Where Anubis was a 13:6 win for TL, Mirage was a 13:5. They didn’t even need malbsMd to come online for this one, as he had a bad map for his standards. No, instead the bald beast took over completely. EliGE went 17-9 in 18 rounds. No one on G2 got close to putting up a fight, bar maybe NertZ, but he struggled still. Though, funnily enough, if you look at the series, r1nkle had G2’s highest rating, not quite how he would’ve wanted to prove us wrong.

Welcome back Liquid, good luck in Malta, try not to do an NA.

Astralis 2-1 HOTU

Astralis came into this one seeking revenge, as HOTU beat them at the Starladder qualifiers, sending them to their demise against HEROIC.

We specify because they clearly carried that energy into map one; they ransacked HOTU. It was a 13:1 demolition of an otherwise really solid tier 2 team. They play a lot of CS, and we’ve rarely seen them caught this flatfooted. Though, to be fair, Jabbi was insane on Cache, as he had 121 ADR and 100% KAST, meaning in every round he had killed, assisted, survived, or traded. Staehr also had over 100 ADR; these were some great individual performances. You can’t really anti-strat for that.

So logically, when things calmed down, HOTU regained composure.

Presumably expecting the Nuke pick from Astralis, they looked well prepared on their CT-side. The defense was extremely proactive, and as a result they kept finding the info needed to decipher Astralis’ midround strat before it was even fully solidified. They knew where to probe and when to do it perfectly. It also helped that dwushka and n0rb3r7 returned the favor that Jabbi and Staehr did them last map, both of them getting 100 ADR + firing HOTU to a third map.

As for what happened there…

It was a lot closer, that’s for sure. The two teams found a balance on Ancient that led to a pretty entertaining game. The first half was shaped by dwushka carrying his form over and closing up shop on CT. If not for some poor macro from mizu and n0rb3r7, they could’ve dominated that half. Instead, they only won it by two rounds, which left a door open. A door Astralis would kick in. They did not give HOTU the same mercy of mistakes, and cleaned up with 8 rounds of their own to close the game and the series.

It’s a shame HOTU couldn’t make a LAN, as they’re real online qualifier grinders. But that’s how the cookie crumbles.

MOUZ 2-0 FOKUS

Not all underdog games are created equally.

Unfortunately, this series was a pretty clear case of a talent gap. Yeah, FOKUS strung some rounds together at times, but MOUZ weren’t really on the ropes. No one on FOKUS gave a particularly good account of themselves either. You look at a 13:10 scoreline on map one and expect a good fight, but you look closer and see all negative K/Ds on FOKUS.

Map 2 was more of the same, despite Banjo’s best efforts.

This time, he went positive, narrowly by one kill, 17-16, sure, but it’s more than his teammates can say. The rest of FOKUS folded as torszi cleaned house on them while his team followed. There’s not a lot more to be said about this, unfortunately; sometimes it’s as simple as the better team won.

We can’t even draw conclusions about MOUZ; no, we have to wait until the quarter/semi-finals to see if they’ve vanquished those demons.

More CS awaits us tomorrow, so join us for that; 100 Thieves vs Spirit has to be fun, right?