Five straight series had passed without Falcons winning the map they chose, and Dust2 broke that run behind kyousuke and four pistol rounds out of four.
Team Falcons are one series from the playoffs at IEM Beijing 2026 after a 2-0 win over HEROIC in the Group A lower bracket semi-final on Wednesday morning, 13-8 on Ancient and 13-6 on Dust2. HEROIC go out in ninth to 12th place with $25,000, and Falcons face NAVI at for a quarter-final spot.
Falcons2-0
HEROICStatsAncient 13-8, Dust2 13-6
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MartinezSaA curse lifted on Dust2
On Tuesday, karrigan told HLTV that Falcons “can’t win our own map pick lately”, and the record backed him up. Since beating NIP at the Thunderpick World Championship, they had lost their own pick in five straight series, including Dust2 in overtime against both BetBoom (14-16) and Aurora (17-19).
Dust2 looked like it might go the same way. Falcons won the first five rounds on the T side, and then HEROIC drew level at 5-5 helped by two Falcons team kills. kyousuke took the last two rounds of the half on his own terms, a triple on a B retake and then four kills to make it 7-5.
After the break HEROIC won one more round. kyousuke won a 1v3 to bring up match point, and NiKo won the last duel to close it out.
kyousuke out in front again
The Russian finished the series 44-25 with 114.7 ADR, the best K-D on the server by a distance, and he had more multi-kill rounds than single-kill rounds across the two maps. After 21 kills on Ancient, he went 23-12 with 121.8 ADR on Dust2. Against NAVI on Monday he went 33-35.
He set the tone in the very first round, winning the Ancient pistol with three kills.
TeSeS added 19-13 and 90.5% KAST on Ancient. karrigan went 16-30, but with NiKo calling the CT side and kyousuke taking space on the T side, Falcons did not need much from the IGL’s rifle.
Four pistols, four clutches
Falcons won all four pistol rounds, and three of them came down to a clutch: kyousuke on the first, TeSeS in a 1v3 at the start of the Ancient second half, and NiKo in a 1v2 on Dust2.
HEROIC coach snappi, who ended his playing career in October to take over on the bench, said after the match that the pistols and the clutches had cost them in Beijing.
Over the last two games we lost eight out of eight pistols and that doesn’t help when you’re an upcoming team that want to beat some bigger dogs.
HEROIC’s best moment came from their IGL. Down 1-6 on their own Ancient pick, they won four rounds in a row, the last of them a 1v3 by Chr1zN that he finished with the clock almost out. That got them to 5-6, but Falcons took the last round of the half and then six of the nine after it.
NAVI for a playoff place
Before the match, NiKo said he had seen “a team that fights a lot” even in the defeats. The next test is the team that sent them into the lower bracket: NAVI won 2-0 on Monday (Ancient 13-5, Mirage 13-11) and beat B8 2-0 this morning (13-8, 13-11).
The Group A lower bracket final starts at . The winner goes to the quarter-finals on 6 November, and the loser is out. We follow the rest of the group stage on our IEM Beijing 2026 page.
