FaZe breeze past Cloud9; to IEM Oakland grand final

Seven rounds were traded back and forth at the start of the semi-final between FaZe and Cloud9 that kicked off on Train. FaZe, who were on the CT side of the map, ended up being the first team to tie two together, going up to a 5-3 lead.

All of the early round wins for FaZe came from successful 1v1's and the European side continued their good play in clutch situations as the match went on. Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard and Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen added a 2v2 win on B (7-3) and Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer resolved a 1v1 following Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's hat-trick on A to make the score 10-3.

Cloud9 ended the half with four rounds, which was not something that they would be happy with considering that three of those rounds came from the start of the half. Winning the second pistol almost sealed the deal for FaZe, who were able to extend their lead to 14-3. The North American side put up a bit of a fight as CT's, but losing to just pistols meant that FaZe were on to match point, and Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács's team closed it out 16-8 in the end.

FaZe's clutches on Train allowed them to close out the series easily

olofmeister started Overpass on the right foot, picking up a 3K with the Glock to earn his side the pistol round. FaZe cleaned up the force-buy, but fell to what was almost a full save from Cloud9 in the third round.

Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip's side was looking good to build a strong CT side off that, but rain's triple with the Deagle ensured the reset and denied Cloud9 any momentum, with a similar situation repeating a couple of rounds later, after Tyler "⁠Skadoodle⁠" Latham and Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik earned Cloud9 their second round by locking down B.

The North American side's biggest struggle on the CT side of Overpass was chaining rounds together, with all of their CT rounds being followed by FaZe round wins. That allowed karrigan's side to go into the second half with an 11-4 lead, and shutting down the pistol round saw them go 14-4 up.

Stewie2K picked up two key kills that earned Cloud9 the first buy round in the second half, but FaZe was dangerous even with just an AWP and four pistols, GuardiaN got two entries with the sniper and NiKo closed out the round with the Deagle to secure match point for FaZe.

In the last round of the series, Skadoodle did his best in a 1v4, taking down two, but couldn't do any more and the semi-final was brought to end with a 2-0 scoreline.

IEM Oakland 2017Best of 3

FaZe

Matchpage

2

0

19th November 2017

Cloud9

16

Train

8

16

Overpass

6

FaZe	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Ladislav 'GuardiaN' KovácsGuardiaN	41 - 25	+16	84.2	84.8%	1.42
Nikola 'NiKo' KovačNiKo	38 - 32	+6	97.9	67.4%	1.28
Olof 'olofmeister' Kajbjerolofmeister	34 - 26	+8	73.2	71.7%	1.20
Finn 'karrigan' Andersenkarrigan	30 - 28	+2	72.8	78.3%	1.18
Håvard 'rain' Nygaardrain	35 - 32	+3	80.6	67.4%	1.16

Cloud9	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Jake 'Stewie2K' YipStewie2K	31 - 35	-4	76.8	69.6%	1.04
Tarik 'tarik' Celiktarik	32 - 36	-4	80.4	60.9%	0.98
Timothy 'autimatic' Taautimatic	28 - 39	-11	72.5	58.7%	0.86
Tyler 'Skadoodle' LathamSkadoodle	26 - 34	-8	61.5	63.0%	0.75
William 'RUSH' WierzbaRUSH	24 - 34	-10	62.5	52.2%	0.70