Astralis have secured themselves a place in the BLAST Premier Fall Final after beating Liquid 2-1 and are set to face Vitality in order to decide the winner of the group. The North American side will join Evil Geniuses in the Showdown in mid-October ina last ditch effort to qualify for November’s Fall Final.
The map veto went as expected as both teams removed their standard bans, with Liquid choosing to play Vertigo, Astralis opting to play Nuke, and Dust2 being the deciding map. Each team’s map pick went in their favour convincingly and it came down to the final map to see which team would progress, with Astralis coming back from 6-12 to win the series.
Lucky made the difference for Astralis on Dust2
On Vertigo, the North American squad had managed to best both Vitality and Evil Geniuses and once again put their best foot forward on the map against Astralis. Liquid ran away with the opening half after winning the pistol and denied the Danes a chance to score consecutive rounds on their T side. Liquid held strong throughout their CT side as they locked in an 11-4 half. Astralis made an attempt to save the map after taking the second pistol round, but it wasn’t enough as Liquid ran over their opponents to take the map 16-9.
With one map in the bag for the North Americans, Astralis moved on to their map pick of Nuke. They managed to replicate Liquid‘s start from Vertigo and dominated on the T side for an 11-4 half. Liquid took every inch available to them with a dynamic T side themselves and shortly brought the game into close contention, as Astralis were denied the chance to string rounds together until Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth locked down the lower bombsite for Astralis‘s first consecutive round on the CT side. Despite their best efforts, Liquid succumbed to the Danish squad 16-11 as the series moved on to Dust2.
After a slow start, Liquid got rolling on the decider as Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski led the charge with a 17 kill half, with Astralis put under pressure to survive the series after the American side led at halftime 10-5. Both teams saw their AWP players leading the boards as both Philip “Lucky” Ewald and Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo saw a lot of success with the weapon. The game tied up at 13-13 as Liquid seemingly had no answer for the Danish T side. Astralis arrived at series point first as the American squad saved for the hopes of winning in overtime, but the Danes closed it out 16-13.
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