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Astralis win third ESL Pro League trophy

Astralis has emerged victorious of the ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe after beating Natus Vincere in the Grand Final. This is the third time Astralis has earned an ESL Pro League trophy in their team’s history, and they did so after coming through the Lower Bracket.

The Path to Redemption

The main story of Astralis in the EPL this season has mainly been about bedding in a new team. Astralis has opted in for a seven-man roster after their players have repeatedly taken time off for burnout. Throughout the event, Astralis has played with Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen, Patrick “es3tag” Hansen, and their returning IGL, Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander.

Astralis found mixed results early on in the EPL after having a slow start. Nevertheless, by Week Two of the regular season, the team got glaive back and began to play with es3tag more for the regular season. Then by the end of the Regular Season, Astralis had managed to push themselves at the top of their group.

Although, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Astralis in the Playoffs. The Danish side lost their first match against Danish rivals Heroic and then made their way into the Lower Bracket for the ESL Pro League Season 12 European Playoffs. From there, the side began the next stage of their redemption story as they looked to advance through the Playoff bracket.

The redemption story started off strong. Astralis drew Team Spirit in the Lower Bracket First Round, and they beat them 2-0. Moving on, they then matched up against a weakened Complexity as the team is playing with a substitute since the departure of Owen “oBo” Schlatter. Astralis too won the Complexity series 2-0, but things started to get a bit difficult with their next event against mousesports.

The series went 2-1 to Astralis, but the score doesn’t tell the full story. The opening match on Dust II was a heavy stomp for Astralis with a 16-3 victory. It appeared the Danes were about to get another stomp of a series, but mouz returned the favour with a 16-6 on Inferno. The final map on Nuke was super close, where Astralis ended up taking the map 19-17 in a hotly contested series.

Just one of many highlights from Astralis in the EPL Season 12

The final hurdle for Astralis was Heroic, which set off a rematch between both of these teams. Heroic’s 2-0 victory had set Astralis on a warpath of redemption in the Playoffs, so this series meant everything to the team. Once again, Astralis secured another 2-0 for themselves taking down Heroic 16-13 on Vertigo and 16-12 on Overpass. With that storyline conquered, there was only one trophy left, the final.

The Grand Final

Natus Vincere was the team they met in the Grand Final after they had a successful Upper Bracket Playoff run. The team earned themselves a free win because of the success, so the pressure was on Astralis to make a comeback. The challenge of coming back only became harder as Na’Vi won Dust II 16-12. With the scoreline 2-0 to Na’Vi, Astralis needed to win three maps to win the series.

Lo and behold that is exactly what Astralis did. With their back against the wall, they then reverse swept the series with a 16-14 win on Nuke, 22-19 win on Train, and finally a 16-11 win on Overpass. Astralis overcame so many obstacles through the entirety of the ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe event. Above all, this Grand Final victory shows how much work they have put in to embed a new seven-man roster. Not only this, but they showed great adaptation and remained strong even when it looked like they were on the verge of elimination multiple times.

In hindsight, this series was certainly exciting for all the right reasons

Astralis now has some time to prepare for the next few events they have to compete in. In addition, Astralis’ next big event is DreamHack Open Fall 2020 on 15th October- 25th October, followed by the BLAST Premier Fall starting on 29th October.

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FURIA victorious at ESL Pro League Season 12 NA Finals

FURIA Esports has emerged victorious after great 3-0 series against 100 Thieves in the ESL Pro League Season 12 NA Finals. The Brazillian side was on the path to success all the way through to ESL Pro League weekly gamedays and maintained their form through the finals. Let’s recap how the Brazillian side managed their success.

The Regular Season

FURIA had great weekly showings throughout the Regular Season, dominating right until the end of Week 3 as they lost their first series against 100 Thieves. In Week Four, FURIA lost to Chaos.E.C. and that was the moment that Evil Geniuses surpassed them.

With the two late defeats in the Regular Season, it seemed like the momentum for FURIA had faltered. The story for the Playoffs was one of doubt, although, they had a favourable first match.

The Playoffs

With EG and FURIA taking first and second place, the two teams once again collided in the Playoffs Upper Bracket. While FURIA’s Regular Season momentum had somewhat subsided, Evil Geniuses had only grown with their first-place finish. Although the narrative for EG was to beat the only team that took them down in the Regular Season, FURIA.

It seemed like the FURIA was not shut down at all by the recent losses to other NA teams. FURIA came back strong in their first playoff round and destroyed Evil Geniuses. The results of the maps were not even close to. FURIA held Inferno strong with a 16-5 win, which is extremely unusual for an Inferno game. Moving on, Nuke went the way to the Brazilians with a 16-7 victory. This quick series advanced FURIA into the Grand Final with a 1-0 map advantage.

FURIA showing how dominant they are over EG.

The Lower Bracket twist of fate

It was Evil Geniuses and 100 Thieves that entered the Lower Bracket Final after the Aussies woke up with a great victory over Team Liquid. Both Evil Geniuses and 100T continued their trend of the 2-0 storyline as the Aussies put EG to bed with another 2-0 victory.

To give Evil Geniuses credit they managed a much better showing with two very close maps. 100T won both 16-14 Dust II with the next battle on Inferno going 16-13. The most iconic thing about this result is that Evil Geniuses’ monopoly on North American CS:GO has fallen as their trophy spree is over. With all that said, it was two new teams entering a Grand Final for a considerable time.

FURIA’s clean 3-0

100 Thieves emerging glory was put to an end with the power level that FURIA was on. The first map os the series was Vertigo, and FURIA may have changed the way the map is played forever. The side had discovered a brand-new boost in Vertigo that makes the map much more CT friendly than results in the past has told us. The new triple boost on the scaffolding blindsided 100 Thieves, challenging their on the spot creativity for mush of their T side. It is safe to say that FURIA stole the show on Vertigo and won the map 16-7, bringing them to series point of the tournament.

Don’t you love it when a team brings something new to the table?

The following map was Inferno where both teams put up a good fight. At one point in the map, both teams were on 10-10, showing how close the map was. Although, FURIA worked out how to take down 110T from there and won the map 16-10, taking home the NA EPL trophy.

FURIA has come a long way in the North American scene throughout 2020 and this victory is a huge payoff. Congratulations on FURIA for taking home the ESL Pro League Season 12 NA Finals trophy. $77,500 USD and gaining key Pro Tour points along the way.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via DreamHack / Stephanie Lindgren.

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ESL Pro League Season 12 North America – Who made it?

The ESL Pro League Season 12 North America Group Stages are over and it was an incredibly close four week of matches. There was a race for the fourth seed into the playoffs with 100 Thieves, Chaos, and Gen.G all racing for that final spot. However, 100 Thieves came out on top and head to the playoffs with Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses and FURIA Esports.

The race for fourth

The race for the fourth seed has been stemming from the beginning of the third week. The likes of Chaos, Gen.G and 100T had their super week, and it came down to the wire. Gen.G, unfortunately, had to compete against the top three teams after starting strong, but sadly they went 1-2 in week three. Meanwhile, Chaos started growing wins in week three with a 2-1 week, only losing to Evil Geniuses. 100 Thieves had a strong showing in week three, with a 2-1 week, only losing to Gen.G.

With these results, Chaos managed to take the fifth place from Gen.g, and the race was on between Chaos and 100T in week four. If either team lost and the other one it could decide the fourth-place team. Only in week four, both teams won. Chaos came in clutch with the 2-1 series win over FURIA. Chaos needed to get a sizeable round lead in their wins if they wanted to close the gap of positive round difference to contend against 100T. And that is what they did. Chaos brought their Overpass CT side to 16-3 in an impressive game three.

Chaos had a great Overpass showing against FURIA

Nevertheless, Chaos’ dream of making playoffs was shut down. 100T was the match after Chaos, and they got the clean 2-0 series win against Triumph. With that victory, 100T qualified to the ESL Pro League Season 12 North America Playoffs.

Evil Geniuses top the groups

Evil Geniuses remain the most consistent North American team in CS:GO. Throughout the four weeks of the EPL, Evil Geniuses has only lost one series to FURIA 0-2 and Triumph is the only team to take a map off them in their series wins. With Chaos beating FURIA, EG secured first place as the only team with a 6-1 record in the Group Stage.

Since FURIA and Evil Geniuses are the top two seeds from the Groups, they both head to the Upper Bracket Final. This will be a rematch, and it will be interesting to see if FURIA can beat EG once again on 24th September. Evil Geniuses are back-to-back North American champions, and they have continued to grow their trophy cabinet since coming back from the player break. Perhaps Evil Geniuses are destined for another trophy if FURIA is not able to repeat the Group success they had in week three.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via ESL / Helena-Kristiansson.

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ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe – The Group Stage winners

The ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe Group Stages are over. The top four teams from each group are decided and will head to the quarterfinals beginning on 29 September. With that said, let us take a look at the eight teams who made it out of the Groups.

Group A

Over in Group A, Natus Vincere was the most consistent team in the ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe. The team was constantly in the top two teams of the Group with a first-place finish by the end of Group A. The only team to beat them in their group was ENCE, who was tied first place with Na’Vi until they fell off in the final week. For Natus Vincere, this a huge deal after their recent tournaments has been sub-par considering their standard. The Group Stage of the EPL has woke them up into the giants we know they are.

As mentioned in the week before, Group A was becoming a lot tenser by the second week. The likes of Heroic, G2, OG and BIG were climbing and the battle for the three other seeds in Group A was tough. In the end, Heroic and BIG grew into the role of quarterfinalist, with BIG even knocking ENCE out of the top two to take the second-place group finish.

Heroic’s win over OG sent them to the quarterfinals

Group B

Over in Group B, Astralis came from being a bottom team to a top team in the space of two weeks. They are the most improved team in the ESL Pro League Season 12 Europe league by far. In Week Two, Astralis got their in-game leader, Lukas “Gla1ve” Rossander back. Every other game they rotated Lucas “Bubzkji” Andersen Patrick “es3tag” Hansen, which seemed to have worked. By the end of the Group Stage, Astralis sit in first place with a 6-1 record, just like Natus Vincere in Group A.

As for Group B, it was rather close as it was all the way through the group stage. Complexity fell off as the favourites for Group A in the final week as mousesports played upset and took the world number five down ina 2-0 series. Moving on, FaZe Clan somehow managed a victory over them, making space for Astralis to pass them. With mousesports clutch win, they managed to keep them in the playoffs race before locking it in with a win over Vitality. Surprisingly, Team Spirit made it through tho the quarter-finals after a great series. They made their way into the groups after their victory over mousesports in the final week.

mousesports getting in a key round which leads to a 2-0 series over Vitality

Quarters

On the 29th September, Natus Vincere will play mousesports in the first quarter-finals of the day. Moving on, Complexity and ENCE will battle in the following series. BIG and Team Spirit are the third matchup of the day with Astralis and Heroic closing the day with a Danish darby. The losers of these series will play on 30th September in the Lower Bracket Round One elimination matches. The action is expected to kick off at 14:00 CEST for both days.

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Heroic and EG win ESL One Cologne

Heroic and Evil Geniuses are your ESL One Cologne Champions after they both took down their opposition in the EU and NA Online events. Both teams put in fantastic work and show the world why they are winning the majority of their games over the last few months.

Heroic win EU

Heroic have put in the work over the last few months of the online era. The team was approaching around 70% win ratio over the last few months before the player break, and this trajectory only carried on into Cologne. The team returned for the DreamHack Open Master Summer event where they finished second place. With the hype from that tournament, they transitioned into a successful team for Cologne.

The most impressive thing about Heroic is that they had to win the event, facing off against the likes of Fnatic in the Lower Bracket and Team Vitality in the final. What makes the event even better is they beat Team Vitality 3-0, which is really unprecedented. With this victory, Heroic become the first Danish team to win an ESL One event, granting them a historic status within Denmark.

Heroic’s map results were quite extraordinary as well. Heroic won Mirage 16-7, Inferno 16-13 and Nuke 16-9. This is incredibly exciting considering that these are some of the more popular maps in CS:GO right now, and Team Vitality has some excellent firepower and strategy as they one of the better teams in CS:GO.

However, Heroic has had some wind knocked out their sails. Heroic’s coach has been found to have abused a spectating bug during the DreamHack Masters Summer event. He was caught abusing a bug where the spectator camera was allowed to stay in a position the following round. This meant that the coach was allowed to get free information in live rounds. Because of this, ESL has banned their coach for a year, leading to him being benched from the team. This is serious allegations, and definitely one to watch as we pay closer attention to Heroic in the coming events.

ESL has ruled that Heroic, MiBR and Hardlegion abused the bug in recent tournaments.

EG win ESL One Cologne clean

On the other side of the Atlantic, Evil Geniuses beat Team Liquid 3-2 after an intense series between two rivals. Both teams ended up trading map after map, where Evil Geniuses earned their series victory on map 5. To top it off, both teams had really close map results as well. This was an incredible series, showing that North American CS:GO us getting their top tier rivalries back.

After a period of struggle for Team Liquid, they came bouncing back in the Final. Team Liquid had a slow start getting to the top of the scene after Evil Geniuses battered them in the Group Stages and Cloud 9 took a map off them in the elimination round. However, the more the tournament went on, the more Team Liquid found their footing.

Evil Geniuses found themselves taking the first map of the series on Nuke 19-16 after Team Liquid had only been battered 16-9 on Nuke by EG in their group stage encounter. Moving on, Liquid had a nice map of Vertigo with a 16-9 map win. Team Liquid dominated the T side of Vertigo, showing the world how exactly the T side can run away with the map.

Team Liquid with great gameplay on Vertigo

The theme of the series came back to haunt Team Liquid. EG would once again get a map pick, with yet another close scoreline on Inferno. This map was another 16-12 map, with Evil Geniuses taking the map, bringing them to the series point. Although, TeamLiquid was not going to be eliminated that easily. Mirage was the following map and team Liquid dominated that showing 16-6. Finally, it was time for the decider on Dust II.

Dust II went yet another 16-12 victory, with EG coming in clutch and taking the trophy. Yet again, EG takes another trophy in North America and maintain their dominance over Team Liquid. The only thing to note on this front is that EG has some work to do as this newly fired up Team Liquid roster is making it their rivalry really competitive once again.

EG are your ESL One Cologne Champions.

Stay tuned to Dartfrog for all the latest news and analysis on CS:GO and follow us on our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitch. Image via ESL.