Vitality outgun Falcons 2-0 on apEX’s first day back

ropz finished 40-25 as the best player on the server, and Falcons lost all four pistol rounds and both maps 13-10.

Team Vitality booked their place in the BLAST Rivals 2026 Season 2 playoffs on Wednesday morning with a 2-0 win over Team Falcons, 13-10 on Anubis and 13-10 on Dust2. It was their first official match with Dan “apEX” Madesclaire back in the lineup, and it sends them into the Group A upper final against FURIA on Thursday 05:30 CET, with a semi-final place at stake.

Vitality2-0FalconsStats▾Anubis 13-10, Dust2 13-10

Vitality	K-D	+/-	ADR	KAST
ropz	40-25	+15	84.3	76.1%
ZywOo	36-27	+9	75.7	76.1%
mezii	30-26	+4	69.1	76.1%
flameZ	31-36	-5	82.7	73.9%
apEX	24-35	-11	64.6	58.7%

Falcons	K-D	+/-	ADR	KAST
m0NESY	37-29	+8	77.9	76.1%
TeSeS	28-30	-2	67.8	65.2%
NiKo	28-32	-4	64.5	60.9%
karrigan	26-33	-7	63.9	67.4%
kyousuke	28-38	-10	68.2	76.1%

Seven in a row was not enough

Dust2 was Vitality’s pick, and for a while it looked like the map would take the series to a decider. Vitality won the pistol round on the T side and went 5-0 up, before Falcons answered with seven rounds in a row. TeSeS held B with three kills for their first round, and Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin shut down a B push on his own.

Falcons led 7-5 at the half and 9-7 after it. Then Robin “ropz” Kool took over. He found three kills in one spray as Falcons split onto B, and Vitality won six of the last seven rounds.

apEX supplied the loudest moment. Moments after an outburst on stage that the broadcast caught on camera at 9-9, he finished a four-kill round with a grenade for a 10-9 lead.

Falcons tied it once more, but ropz picked them off one by one on B to make it 11-10, and then picked up a second AWP to play next to Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut for the last rounds. ZywOo, quiet on Anubis at 16-17, finished Dust2 20-10, and ropz ended the series 40-25 with 84.3 ADR.

m0NESY could not do it alone

Anubis was Falcons’ pick, and Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov was the best player on it by a distance: 28-15 with 112.6 ADR, 13 kills more than any of his teammates. His AWP was behind the fightback from 6-2 to 6-5 in the first half and from 10-5 to 10-10 in the second. Vitality still took the last three rounds.

The pistol rounds hurt most. Falcons lost all four in the series, and on Anubis the second one slipped away after they had the numbers: mezii, flameZ and ropz held the planted bomb against a five-man retake to make it 8-5.

It is the same problem their coach described after they went out of IEM Beijing last week. Danny “zonic” Sørensen told HLTV that “when we get off to a bad start, it can destroy our entire game”, and Dust2 was the only map he said Falcons could rely on. On Wednesday it was Vitality’s pick, and Falcons lost it from 9-7 up. m0NESY went 9-14 on it.

FURIA and Legacy on Thursday

Vitality face FURIA, who beat Legacy 2-0 earlier on Wednesday, in the upper final on Thursday 05:30 CET. The winner goes straight to Saturday’s semi-finals, and the loser to the quarter-finals.

Falcons play Legacy in the lower final at 03:00. Lose that, and the reigning Major champions leave Hong Kong without a win, three weeks before they start their title defence at the PGL Major Singapore. The result keeps Vitality second in the VRS on HLTV’s calculator, with Falcons ninth.

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