It was the “Old boys” versus the “Young guns” when Imperial faced Cloud9 in the 1-2 bracket. The goal of this matchup: To survive elimination.
“Ax1Le” had an outrageous start to Imperial’s pick of Overpass. The Russian rifler was at one point 13-1 and Cloud9 took the first six rounds off the back of his dominating display. But as “Ax1Le” started to coll down, so did his team, which allowed Imperial to pick up an acceptable five rounds before halftime.
The Brazilians had the upper hand for most of the second half, but they were not able to capitalize on hitting map point at 15-14. The map needed OT, three of them in fact, before the veterans of Imperial were finally able to win their map pick.
After that surprising loss, Cloud9 took the match to Vertigo, perhaps their strongest map. Even though the Russians have an amazing track record on this map they only led by a single round at halftime. This was partially due to fantastic form from “fer”.
As they moved to the CT side, Cloud9 started taking care of business. The CIS squad took advantage of the fact that Imperial do not play Vertigo all that often and quickly pushed the match to a decider.
Mirage was all that was left between the two teams and elimination, and in a turn of events that no one could have foreseen, Imperial came out on the CT side and stomped Cloud9 to the tune of 12-3 at halftime after having lost the pistol round.
“fer”, who had been the Brazilians’ best player throughout the first two maps, raised his level to that of the Luminosity “fer” of old. He was an immovable object on the defense and an unstoppable force on the offense, and in combination with his team, they eliminated one of the favorites in Cloud9.
Cloud9 – Imperial 1-2 | PGL Major Antwerp Legends Stage
23-25 (Overpass) | {cflag:RU} Ax1Le – 1.26 Rating / 36-30 K-D / 91.9 ADR
16-9 (Vertigo) | {cflag:KZ} Hobbit – 1.45 Rating / 23-13 K-D / 89.7 ADR
3-16 (Mirage) | {cflag:BR} fer – 1.95 Rating / 25-8 K-D / 127.4 ADR
MVP: {cflag:BR} Fernando “fer” Alvarenga – 1.29 Rating / 79-56 K-D / 91.7 ADR
