Only three teams remain in the Intel Extreme Masters circuit’s LAN finals, as Astralis were shown the door after two games against FaZe Clan.
The European superteam, who narrowly escaped elimination yesterday after eeking out a win against reigning Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Valve Major champions Cloud9, dropped the Danes in dominant fashion. This marked yet another disappointing result for Astralis, whose path to the semifinals had been a lot more straight-forward, after the Danish all-star roster had only dropped one map prior to reaching the semifinals.
Starting the series off on FaZe’s map pick Cache, the European team won the opening pistol round of the series, and secured the following two rounds without any issues. But after securing enough money to purchase rifles, Astralis quickly stopped FaZe from gaining significant momentum—as Nikolai “device” Reedtz and his team consistently held FaZe off from breaching the A bomb site.
FaZe’s response to Astralis came in the tenth round, when the team elected to go for an aggressive play that caught the Danes off-guard. From there, Nikola “NiKo” Kovač and his crew reversed Astralis streak of six straight round wins, and secured a 9-6 scoreline ahead of the map’s second half.
After dropping the second pistol round, Astralis’ struggled to gain any kind of footing against their opponents. While the Danes did put a couple of rounds together at one point, FaZe’s already solid lead was more than enough to see the superteam claim Cache.
The series was then decided on Overpass. Sitting on a 68 percent winrate on the map, Overpass is one of FaZe’s hallmark battlegrounds—which the team definitely showed.
FaZe yet again grabbed the opening pistol round, with both NiKo and olofmeister grabbing two kills. Although Astralis took their first proper buy round, FaZe quickly recuperated and proceeded to win the following six rounds in a row, meaning the team already had a comfortable lead going into the second half.
Astralis couldn’t mount any kind of response to FaZe’s onslaught until the 11th round. The Danes finally started to mount some kind of resistance against FaZe, with device yet again delivering a star-level performance for his team.
After winning five rounds in a row, the sides were switched, and Astralis proceeded to win their first pistol round of the entire series. But while the Danes caught up to FaZe on the scoreboard, the weapon rounds proved to once again be very one-sided in favor of FaZe—not in small part due to Håvard “rain” Nygaard, who had 29 kills across 26 rounds.
Ultimately, the series ended with a 16-10 scoreline in favor of FaZe Clan, who are now waiting to play against the winner of Team Liquid and Fnatic in the IEM World Championship grand finals.
