Astralis grabs grand final spot in front of Russian stars
The Danes came back after a severe defeat on Nuke to secure the series 2-1 against s1mple and company at IEM Global Challenge.
Astralis vs. NAVI will always be a blockbuster of a match, featuring two of the most victorious teams in the history of the game, and not mention also a clash between two of the best players ever in Nicolai “device” Reedtz and Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev. And today it was the Danes from Astralis who became the victor.
Astralis made a strong start to the match on Inferno, with Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth presenting a solid 4k pistol round, which kick-started a strong Astralis run by setting up an early 8-3 lead. The Danes continued cruising through NAVI’s CT-side via smart calls from the IGL Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander. On nearly every round, the intelligent IGL kept NAVI guessing on which site Astralis chose to execute on, due to smart fakes and excellent utility usage. That made NAVI bewildered, and the Russians kept rotating to the wrong bombsite, which resulted in easy bomb plants for the Danish team and a confident 10-5 half-time score.
NAVI didn’t show up in the first half, with especially s1mple performing under his usual level. The newcomer B1T and electronic helped NAVI to close in on, by good executes and perfect entry kills, looking like a potential comeback was on the cards after being down 13-6. But device thought different, and the powerful AWPer closed all hope for overtime, presenting a strong 3k on match point, resulting in a 16-13 win for Astralis.
To pick Nuke against Astralis will always be a tough call to make, due to their incredible history on the map. From 2018-2019, the Danes were completely unplayable on the map, presenting wild numbers on the nuclear powerplant called Cedar Creek. However, it’s 2020 now, and Astralis isn’t at the same level anymore, and that was clearly shown on the map today.
After a close Danish 8-7 lead in a hectic back and forth half, s1mple and NAVI took over after the switch up. The Russian team dominated Astralis in every aspect of the game, forcing the third map of Train, through a confident 16-9 where the dynamic duo of electronic and s1mple concludes the map with a 1.67 and 1.29 rating.
A third map was required, and the veto called for a thrilling decider on Train. Even though Astralis was handed a severe loss on Nuke, gla1ve and his soldiers showed great character, by coming back and improve their performance. The Danes cashed in a close 8-7 halftime lead, which they continued to increase on the CT-side with Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen stepping up after two cold performances on the two prior maps. The dangerous entry-fragger and his 1.33 rating led Astralis to a 16-11 victory which means that Astralis grabs the first grand final spot at IEM Global Challenge.
