Astralis surprised everyone as they had no problems taking down the world’s #4 of Cloud9. The last time the two met, ‘nafany’ and co. easily took out the Danes. Today the roles were reversed.
Astralis chose to start the action on Inferno. Starting on the T side, Astralis was in control for most of the first half. ‘Farlig’ was struggling to have an impact, which is not unusual for T-side AWPers on Inferno, but luckily ‘Xyp9x‘ and ‘blameF‘ greatly picked up the slack. The Danes excitingly led by five rounds at halftime.
With ‘Ax1Le‘ popping off, Cloud9 had an easier time finding rounds on the offense, but with the big halftime deficit, Astralis closed out the first map with ease.
Playoff secured! What a game.
GGWP @C9CSGO.#ASTWIN | #ToTheStars pic.twitter.com/Q7XWTllXPs— Astralis Counter-Strike (@AstralisCS) July 9, 2022
Astralis capitalized on their momentum from the first map and sprinted to a 9-1 lead. ‘k0nfig‘, like yesterday, was doing great work, but ‘blameF’ was on an entirely different level. Despite IGL ‘nafany’ sitting on an 0-14 KD at halftime, the CIS squad managed to recover and take five rounds total before switching to the defense.
Cloud9 importantly won the second-half pistol round, but it ended up having almost no influence as Astralis answered right back with a force-buy win, and from there on out it was not hard for the Danes to close the series.
Cloud9 – Astralis 0-2 | IEM Cologne
11-16 (Inferno) | {cflag:DK} Xyp9x – 1.39 Rating / 26-16 K-D / 105.0 ADR
8-16 (Mirage) | {cflag:DK} blameF – 1.89 Rating / 30-12 K-D / 123.9 ADR
MVP: {cflag:DK} Benjamin ‘blameF’ Bremer – 1.56 Rating / 53-29 K-D / 102.6 ADR
