New look Aurora falls flat at BLAST Bounty with loss to FOKUS

Well, that was unexpected.

After an off-season where most people considered Aurora significant winners, this result will leave a lot of people stunned. This wasn’t just a case of close games being swung by online CS, even if that is undoubtedly a factor; FOKUS played the better CS. It’s early days, but this game really highlighted some of the questions we, and others, had about this move when it was made.

Take a look at map one, Cache.

One of the first things people pointed out when these moves were made was that it’s odd for soulfly to get removed. He was far from the biggest issue on this team, and Jimpphat hasn’t shown his old form in a hot sec; he’s a slight bet on upside. On Cache, that upside didn’t materialize. He was a very negative round swing player for them despite fragging alright. That’s a rare problem for Jim, who’s usually a low-mistake player.

Though it’s hard to blame him for that map loss.

Aurora won both pistols and got both conversions; we don’t have the exact numbers, but in CS2, that’s basically a guaranteed win. Whenever FOKUS won their first round of the half, they would keep the momentum up, and Aurora failed to deal with it. The only way they could end a six-round win streak from FOKUS on their CT side was Wicadia getting a double kill in the early round off of aggression.

At least their own pick, Nuke, went better.

They’ve obviously practiced the map a lot, with ash likely having elected to make that their home turf. Jimpphat looked more comfortable, even if he didn’t have a great map, and the Turkish core all had good games. This was the Aurora we expected from the beginning, and gave us the false impression that we’d be back to regularly scheduled programming.

But wow, we were not prepared for Dust2.

Cache perfectly foreshadowed what was to come because when FOKUS won pistol, Aurora could not stop their momentum. Seven straight rounds is what they managed before anything was done about it. kyxsan and co only managed two T-rounds, and whether their CT would’ve been better, we have no idea. They won pistol and converted (again), and then lost to the first rifle round, which turned into a three-round win streak, and the game was over.

Maybe if Aurora didn’t mess up the knife round, we could’ve seen what they had to offer on the defense.

All credit to FOKUS though, as they were the better side today.

Everyone on their roster showed up at different times throughout this game, and it’s cool to see names like podi showing back up after an ill-fated stint with ENCE. Though big credit should go to Banjo, who was a man possessed on Dust2 and helped them generate the momentum needed to spiral.

Let’s hope for Aurora’s sake this was a one-off; maybe FOKUS were just really inspired by the $30,000 USD bounty on their heads.

That’s a lot of skins, you know?