HEROIC slip to 0-2 in disastrous first day - IEM Cologne Major

You might have to bare with us a little bit, because there's been a ton of games on day one.

HEROIC are the big losers of the opening day as an opening round loss to Sharks and a pitiful collapse to Lynn Vision sees them drop into the 0-2 bracket for day two.

They were up 8-4 and 10-6 on Dust 2 against Lynn Vision, on the T side, but let the Chinese side win seven of the final eight rounds to close out the map in regulation, with EmiliaQAQ putting on a show on the B site.

While Westmelon put up the raw numbers, it was Emilia's multikill holds that repelled HEROIC time and time again, as well as some absolutely extraordinary shooting from Z4KR, who seemed to hit all the hard ones and miss all the easy ones. His wallbang headshot through the mid doors to open up a round was a particular highlight.

xfl0ud has been great, but nobody else on his team seemed to wake up today - a big couple of days is needed, now, for HEROIC.

They'll be joined in the 0-2 bracket by TYLOO, who lost to MIBR in a pretty wild game. MIBR opened with a crazy loss to THUNDERdOWNUNDER (RIP Pick'Ems), and very nearly lost to TYLOO as well. From 10-2 up, MIBR managed to sneak into OT with a hail mary top rush on Nuke, and their other round was an ace from venomzera.

THUNDERdOWNUNDER sadly followed up that entirely unexpected win with an expected - but close - loss to B8 in a 1-0 game, who beat TYLOO in the opener. Isn't it nice when things work out like that?

SINNERS are the other unexpected team in the 0-2 bracket, but after watching them against NRG we're less surprised. That was ugly. FlyQuest beat them in OT, NRG smacked 'em. The final 0-2 team is Gaimin Gladiators, who put up one of the worst rounds of all time in a 1-13 loss to BIG. They had a player walk into their own molly to try and fake that they were going into secret, except they were already in secret and did it in the least inconspicious fashion possible. They all died.

Let's talk about somebody who hasn't had a bad day, for a change. BetBoom slid straight into the 2-0 games even without s1ren, as they managed to get past Liquid despite Magnojez not really showing up. Boombl4 had one of those games, and even malbsMd trying his best couldn't stop BetBoom from marching on.

Quite worrying for Liquid, even if they did beat BIG.

GamerLegion as expected are 2-0, but were run close by FlyQuest. M80 beat Lynn Vision and Sharks to start their run, and the aforementioned B8 round off the top four.

That means tomorrow we have four BO1s and four BO3s, which is always a fun time.

NRG and FlyQuest are up first, presuming you don't want to watch Sharks vs Lynn Vision. Unfortunately the second set of games are both better than the first (split them up next time!), as Liquid vs MIBR is a must-watch and THUNDER dOWNUNDER is a begrudging second screen viewing because of that.

GamerLegion and BetBoom meet for a spot in Stage two while TYLOO take on SINNERS for survival, before M80 vs B8 and Gaimin Gladiators vs HEROIC.

If HEROIC lose that, we'll have a lot of questions.

All results can be found here and tomorrow's games here.