Dota 2
CS2
BC.Game bossed NIP to advance to the second stage of IEM Krakow and send NIP home.
s1mple (who else?) was the driving force behind the win with 41 kills over the two maps, as a hapless NIP struggled to hold him down. electroNic joined him at the top of the scoreboard, but it was very much the s1mple show, if not just because every game he is in, is.
A flawless defence on Dust 2 powered by krazy made that map a breeze, but s1mple’s 27-17 scoreline on Nuke was the one that we all wanted to see. Is s1mple back?
Maybe, but we’d like to see it against a team a bit better than NIP first. This was another disappointing showing from a team we like, and want to be viable at the top level, but simply are not.
Still, we’re going to get to see s1mple against some better opposition in the next few days, and that’s always worth celebrating.
Credit: Kirill Bashkirov
FUT executed a flawless plan and earned themselves a marquee victory over a shellshocked Team Liquid, who leave Krakow before Stage 2.
dem0n has been one of the standouts of the event for FUT, and he was rampant in this game, punching holes time and time again for cmtry to exploit, and it was clear FUT knew exactly what Liquid were doing every round. They found multiple killer flanks on Nuke, and found every opening they needed on Ancient.
Liquid, it should be mentioned, had a stand-in, and it’s hard to draw many conclusions from this event. ultimate did what ultimate does; he was excellent until they played against a (potentially?) very good team in FUT, who nullified him and bullied him.
On the ‘ultimate’ test, FUT appear to be a genuinely good team, as he went negative.
They’ll be joined by NRG, who snuck past Astralis in an impressive showing, especially from oSee. It’s been a while since we’ve seen them at this level, and oSee was absolutely lights out. He won a pair of big clutches in a 16-14 win on Mirage, as well as racking up a 30 bomb, and was far and away the best player on the server.
If NRG had lost that map, it would have been a tragedy.
Inferno was more about br0’s revenge, and the brief fulfilling of Jeorge’s potential, as nitr0 finally got one over on Astralis, about six years too late.
Aurora cleanly took down a lacklustre paiN side, though it is heartwarming to see Aurora be half-decent again. Admittedly, paiN have not given us much to believe in, beside vsm’s performances.
On the other hand, XANTARES is back to doing what he’s supposed to do - blitzing tier two teams and farming high ratings. We love XANTARES.
susp had a horror game as GamerLegion beat HEROIC quite handily. You can do all the analysis you want - when one of your riflers gets seven (7) kills in the series, you’re not going to win. Poor nilo had 5x his kills and went positive in the 2-0 loss.
HEROIC might look better with their AWPer in, but they need more from susp.
GamerLegion moved on to get absolutely mullered by Astralis 2-0, which is not a great look. Good for Astralis, at least, who seem to be getting a tune out of their newest additions. If they were a new org, we’d be far more impressed by them than we are with that big scary name, in truth.