The hard-fought victory against Astralis saw the Casper “cadiaN” Møller-led team pick up a fifth consecutive series win and complete an impressive run through the tournament’s entire lower bracket to set up a best-of-five title decider against Vitality, scheduled to kick off on Sunday at 18:00 .
With the loss, Astralis now close their chapter with Patrick “es3tag” Hansen with a third-place finish at the RMR event, with the 24-year-old set to move to the new Cloud9 squad after spending the last three months as part of the Danish side’s extended roster.
stavn shone on Nuke as he led the way to a comeback victory
The two Danish rivals, who had previously played a grueling series against one another in the group stage, provided a spectacle of a battle on Nuke. The opening map looked firmly in Astralis‘ hands at first, until Heroic stepped up to the plate to snatch it away with a massive comeback. Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander‘s team started off on the CT side and utterly dominated the opening stretch, but cadiaN & co. managed to break through the huge bank to claim five rounds in the opening half.
Down 5-13 after a second pistol round loss, Heroic dug their heels in when they got a hold of weaponry on the defense, with Martin “stavn” Lund leading the way to overtime as he kept racking up openings and multikills to stop Astralis‘ efforts to close the map in regulation. One set of overtime wasn’t enough, with Heroic unable to convert a second map point, but they managed to do so the second time around on the back of a perfect defense.
Astralis struck back on Inferno with a 16-8 win in a closer affair than the scoreline might make it seem. Heroic were more than competitive towards the beginning of their opponents’ pick, but a couple of throwaway rounds in man and economic advantages meant that Astralis gained control late in the first half as Terrorists and managed to stay on top in the second.
The series came down to Vertigo, where the two teams had previously played a quadruple-overtime affair in the group stage of the same event. This time, it was far from as intense as Heroic controlled the map thanks to a couple of dominant runs on each side, clinching the decider 16-11.
