MOUZ cut Falcons down to take a playoffs spot - IEM Krakow

MOUZ took the final playoffs spot over Falcons in a glorious game of Counter-Strike.

It had everything from the sublime to the ridiculous, including Falcons ‘doing a Falcons’ and seeming to suffer from paralysis at the worst of times.

MOUZ took it 2-0, but the double OT in map two made this feel a lot longer, and a third map might have extended this writer’s bed time by another hour, but most certainly would have been worth it.

m0NESY was superb in OT, but xertioN kept pushing MOUZ forwards and eventually the pressure told and the dam broke. Both teams, on this evidence, would have been a boon to the playoffs, but only MOUZ make it.

For Falcons, we’re starting to get a bit worried. MOUZ are of course an excellent team, but they were a title contender last season and now, without any changes, are missing playoffs in the first event of the year. They at least won on Anubis today, against 3DMAX, but we’re still unsure on their map pool. MOUZ beat FaZe cleanly earlier in the day, which, like, yeah, of course.

The other playoff spot went to FURIA, who were pushed all the way by an Astralis team who are remarkably resilient and, dare we say it, exciting for the first time in a long time.

Astralis took Overpass and were within a few rounds of a pretty game-changing win on both Mirage and Nuke, but fell just short. One thing about this Astralis team is that on paper they lack a bit of star power, and FURIA have stars coming out of their ears, and that told, as KSCERATO bailed them out hard with an elite performance on Mirage.

YEKINDAR was having a rough time of converting his gunfights into kills, but KSCERATO held down the farm on the CT side with some incredible work on his own site, in middle and on the other site. He wasn’t bad on Nuke either, but this time he had molodoy to pry open the rounds with a boatload of opening kills.

This was an incredibly encouraging event for Astralis, and despite the loss, we’re probably even more intrigued now than before.

Vitality and Spirit took semi-final spots as you might expect, and it was the AWPers who did the business for them.

ZywOo dropped a frankly hilarious 53 kills on the first map of the series, albeit in 47 rounds. That’s still over a kill per round, though, and he was the only reason they eventually won out as Aurora held strong. This was a game full of crazy retakes, including an insane number of 1vX clutches in OT. Go back and watch it. That’s an order.

That map was arguably even more insane than the MOUZ one, it’s just the stakes weren’t quite as crazy.

sh1ro was an absolute monster for Spirit today as they edged a tight game against G2 to go straight to the semis - though donk, as ever, was not kept quiet for long.

donk was 9-18 on G2’s map win, Overpass, but quickly hit back to top the scoreboard on Dust 2, but his partner in crime sh1ro was equally as impressive. Spirit remain a little inconsistent, but their Dust2 looks terrifying and magixx seems to be keeping it relatively simple and letting his stars shine.

Are they in championship winning form? That’s the million dollar question, and we’d wager no, but it only takes two insane donk maps, and he has them so regularly.