Spirit narrowly survives FaZe scare, MOUZ stroll through

The semi-finals today were a tale of two halves: the first, a high-testosterone thriller, and the second, a predictable 2-1.

FaZe and Spirit put on an absolute show for today's opener, even if it didn’t look that way at first. FaZe were struggling to get a foothold on Dust2, with great B-holds from Neityu being the only way they could stay competitive at first. The second half didn’t even have that; they got run over for a very dominant 13-6 Spirit win.

If that were the theme of this series, it would have been a very different day, but fortunately, the next map was Cache.

This was a very interesting test for FaZe, who have so far been the best team in the world on the new map. It was also a test that didn’t always look to go well; their T-side ran into a lot of dead ends, and Frozen especially struggled heavily to find anything over on the B-side of the map. But Cache is CT-sided for a reason, and FaZe executed their own CT-half flawlessly. Frozen started the half 6-7 and finished it 18-11, coming to life to bring FaZe over the line.

This set us up perfectly for Cinema, map 3, Anubis.

While both previous games had “close” first halves, even if that was misleading on D2, they finished pretty one-sidedly, and well, that wasn’t the case here.

Instead, we got two teams hitting each other in the face with bare knuckles, going back and forth. First, FaZe found opening momentum. In fact, they made it to a 6-1 scoreline looking unbothered. Though that didn’t last, Spirit closed their CT-side pretty strongly in part thanks to a great half from zont1x.

Then, when the sides changed, so did the game.

Spirit took advantage of the stronger T-side on Anubis and imposed their will on FaZe. As soon as FaZe had converted the pistol, they were on it, winning six straight before allowing FaZe an eleventh.

As the last rounds ticked down, it got a lot closer. Suddenly the rounds became tight and were decided by micro decision-making, and that’s where Spirit found their edge.

FaZe were too predictable and made too many mistakes. In one round, Neityu was set up in A-main, and despite some odd choices, he got a 3K. Fast forward a few rounds, and the same setup is being reused on different information from Spirit, so naturally FaZe get run down, and now the game is nearly over. In the last important round FaZe had, they bought double AWPs, Twistzz found one kill from Bricks, and then repeeks with no ability to shoot. Neityu then gets an opportunity to deny the plant, and doesn’t.

These moments were what separated a well-oiled machine poised for finals and a team still making their way back. Final score, 13-11, 2-1 to Spirit.

Our second series of the day, MOUZ vs Astralis, was a bit less dramatic.

Anyone who watches CS regularly could have told you Astralis was going to pick Ancient as their opener. It’s been their “home” since the earliest days of Jabbi joining the project, and this showed again why. They were very comfortable, with the aforementioned Jabbi having his customary overperformance on his domain. MOUZ only managed six rounds here, making the game at least somewhat interesting.

At least, you’d hope.

On their own pick, Mirage, MOUZ resumed the regularly scheduled programming. They took a commanding lead on T before losing out towards the end of the half. Fortunately, Mirage is about as CT-sided as Nuke these days, and MOUZ made it look like it. There were basically no entrances for Astralis to find as the half progressed, though that might have been a symptom of Staehr being the only player capable of fighting back.

Dust2 wasn’t much better for the Danes. In fact, the score was identical, 13-9.

MOUZ started on the T-side, which let them dictate the pace of play, and torszi and xelex did just that. Between the two of them, they had 27 kills in the first half, and Astralis couldn’t cope at all. Torszi especially was just winning rounds on his own; there wasn’t a single round in that first half that wasn’t heavily impacted by him somehow. By the time Astralis got their turn on T-side, it was 10-2, and after pistol and conversion, it was 12-2. The Danes and friends coughed up a seven-round win streak to make the score flatter them a bit, and then collapsed.