Astralis advance to ECS final over FaZe

10-6-2018 18:25

Astralis swept FaZe 2-0 (16-14 on Train and 16-8 on Inferno) in the second semi-final of ECS Season 5, joining Liquid in the grand final.

The second semi-final of the day kicked off on Train, FaZe's map pick, where Astralis' failed attempt to take control of the A-site resulted in a 5-0 lead for Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and his men. The Danes finally got on the board in the following round with Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth holding the post-plant in a 1v1, which sparked life back in Astralis to win three in a row to make it 4-5.

FaZe put an end to Astralis' run with a firm hold on B and continued the same pattern to win four more for a 10-4 lead, with Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács doing most of the work. Astralis managed to claim the final round of the half, making it a 10-5 scoreline at halftime.

In the second half, Astralis' solid hold on B earned them the second pistol as well as the following anti-ecos to reduce the deficit by two. The Danes added one more round to their comeback before FaZe won their first of the half and pressed on to add three more to their lead (14-9).

Astralis sweep FaZe to face Liquid in the grand final

Trailing FaZe, the Danes managed to turn things around with a couple of firm defensive holds to break FaZe's economy for six in a row to reach map point and eventually claim the map and the series lead.

Inferno was the next map, Astralis' pick, where GuardiaN tapped down three with the USP-S on A to secure the pistol for FaZe. However, Astralis returned with another aggressive approach to the A-site this time achieving the eco, which then put the Danes ahead with two more for a 3-1 lead.

FaZe managed to squeeze in a defuse to end the Astralis' streak, but the Danes picked up where they left off and added three more to their lead (6-2). With money in the bank, FaZe began chipping away at the Danes lead, but Astralis remained in the driver's seat and ended the half with a 10-5 scoreline.

A chaotic start to the second half went the way for FaZe with a plant on B to secure the second pistol, which also transpired into the anti-ecos to reduce the deficit by two (8-10). Astralis then came back to snap FaZe's economy winning six in a row to earn their place in the grand final.

ECS Season 5 FinalsBest of 3

Astralis

Matchpage

10th June 2018

FaZe

Train

Inferno

Astralis	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Nicolai 'device' Reedtz device	43 - 28	+15	82.4	72.2%	1.36
Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander gla1ve	42 - 31	+11	84.8	87.0%	1.33
Emil 'Magisk' Reif Magisk	36 - 36	0	70.7	70.4%	1.06
Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth Xyp9x	34 - 30	+4	74.4	64.8%	1.00
Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen dupreeh	33 - 38	-5	66.5	63.0%	0.97

FaZe	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Ladislav 'GuardiaN' Kovács GuardiaN	48 - 34	+14	89.9	72.2%	1.27
Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač NiKo	41 - 42	-1	83.4	63.0%	1.02
Håvard 'rain' Nygaard rain	30 - 38	-8	63.7	63.0%	0.84
Jorgen 'cromen' Robertsen cromen	27 - 34	-7	58.7	51.9%	0.83
Finn 'karrigan' Andersen karrigan	17 - 40	-23	48.6	55.6%	0.55

kick_karrigan_ffs bench_olofm_ffs Seriously, this team is such a joke, no good strats, no even permanent lineup, because olofm can't play for whatever reason. SK currently lets coldzera call, I'm sure FaZe must try to sign FalleN, the guy knows how to win, he only needs to have fresh blood in his team, new people that believe him and wanna win. And no, it's not a problem that he's an AWPer, his AWPing isn't great anymore so he can be a regular rifler. FaZe does need a change, I'm sure a team with NiKo & GuardiaN should successfully fight for titles, but instead they struggle, it shouldn't be that way. As for olofm - yes, bench him, he shouldn't prevent you from signing a permanent 5th player. NBK is searching for a new team, FaZe needs a supportive player since they already have 3 fraggers, it's a chance for FaZe that will never appear again. New FaZe: rain GuardiaN NiKo NBK FalleN It does make sense roles-wise, experience-wise and results-wise. Stop wasting NiKo's and GuardiaN's talent!

2018-06-10 18:26

28 replies

karrigan worse fragging abilities than smithzz

karrigan is shit! Useless player +1

2018-06-10 18:27

Omegalul

XD you should join faze as a team manager Fucking wannabe

2018-06-10 18:28

NBK LUL

stop wasting rain's and guardian's talent***

that sounds great

2018-06-10 18:31

nerd

2018-06-10 18:32

oh no

2018-06-10 18:33

fallen kkkkkkk nt dumb kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

-botrigan

Agreed mate, NiKo only played badly this match, others he demolishes.

2018-06-10 18:39

1 reply

Exactly. His aim didnt even look that bad. It was more of jumping through smokes and dying. Maybe karrigan had an input in that.

2018-06-10 22:11

2018-06-10 18:44

Writes predictions in advance for each case, and then copy paste OMEGALUL

2018-06-10 18:49

french will never work in any team. They can't even pick a team of french without fights. What makes u think fallen will be interested?

2018-06-10 18:51

It depends on FalleN's being satisfied/unsatisfied with his current role, his team results and a possibility to give up AWPing to somebody else. And also it depends on Immortals I suppose, but Immortals might let him go for a good amount of money from FaZe. And it's not NBK's fault that it's that way within his scene. The only thing that he didn't want to do is to play with Ex6 again because he didn't believe in Ex6, just like shox didn't believe in NBK. And it's not that bad about the French scene, shox got kicked from VG several times. NBK even said shox wouldn't ever be a part of VG again, guess what - VG still picked shox and it still ended up like usual xD Plus, NBK and shox teamed up in G2, although people had doubts that those two might ever play together again. They have some troubles but they can forget about it, except for shox - he does everything he wants. So I don't agree that NBK is bad by any means, he's an experienced and versatile player that can play whatever role.

2018-06-10 18:58

This would probably be amazing team!

2018-06-10 18:55

TOP 10 team NBK Pick one.

2018-06-10 18:57

Fallen hasn't shown to be a great igl recently. At least karrigan reaches semis consistently.

3 replies

And loses to Astralis, who end up winning the event) So they are basically #2 team by all means.

2018-06-11 09:41

2 replies

I don't see SK winning anything with top teams in. Do you?

2018-06-16 22:49

Thats clear like a day

2018-06-17 11:30

Why do you keep posting these post regarding team changes that doesn't make any sense

2018-06-10 19:14

They should really tried to get shox as IGL while he was team less. Not maybe the best IGL out there but fragging wise hes amazing and tbh Im not sure how much karrigan is bringing IGLing wise anyways as FaZe play pretty loose. And if possible coldzera to replace ofolm (unless he can come back for good pretty soon). Getting coldzera from SK would also lead to the demise of one of their biggest rivals and it could happen as SK is in a constant slump. Cold should be open for it. NiKo coldzera rain GuardiaN shox Now shox wont happen, they could still get cold though. Having cold call and also getting s1mple would also be amazing and then they would ruin the competition from NaVi and SK at the same time. Getting someone from Astralis is prolly impossible unless they pay a high overprice.

2018-06-10 20:41

shox said he won titles only when micromanaging his teammates and that he wouldn't like to do that ever again, so shox might only have been a regular player that btw doesn't want to play without SmithZz. Thing is that -coldzera for MIBR is pretty much the same as -s1mple for Na`Vi, they won't let him go and I doubt he will ever want to play on a team that speaks only English. And although gla1ve is a good IGL, he's not a magician, they would still win nothing if they didn't pick Magisk, btw AFAIK Astralis wanted to get rid of dupreeh to keep Kjaerbye, so their decision-making adequacy is not much better than that of fnatic.

2018-06-10 20:47

Yeah, shox wouldt have to micro his teammates in FaZe to win titles though. But yeah, he seems dedicated to his new and pretty mediocre french team. They wont amount to much imo. Tbh Astralis is a pretty hard team to ruin just by getting one of their players, theres so much talent in Denmark so getting someone amazing to replace anyone in there would be hard but not impossible. They seem to have a gameplan that works really well.

2018-06-10 20:59

omg, he really thinks that Fallen would leave sk for FaZe lul, delusional fan

2018-06-10 21:15

GG but LUCKY

EZ for Liquid in final

2018-06-10 18:40

GGWP for Astralis.

nice

EZ PZ

Yea

expected

too ez

Expected

-karribot

Expected GG

ezz

karrigan=shit

Choked

ez for nadestralis

Guardian FeelsBadMan

2018-06-10 18:29

So in the first map, they had a technical pause because Rain reported that he can see players through x-ray and then they fixed it. If he hadn't reported that, he might have won some of the rounds himself. I always thought there is a moderator behind the team to look out for such stuff but this incident made me think that there may be some teams who may not report such things. Know if it can happen with faze, it may have happened with some astralis player too (some of glave shots looked fishy). Anyway gg. Astralis remains #1.

Astralis always seemed to be good sports. I feel more t2 teams and brazilian teams would pull shit like that.

2018-06-10 22:14

olof so bad hes not even on the scoreboard lul

nt prokda

g2 nip > ostrales

classic guardian, always delivers when it matters

2018-06-10 18:34

What more karrigan have to do to get kick out.

9-44

2018-06-10 18:38

So he has to become fifflaren?

2018-06-10 19:34

Yes

2018-06-10 19:44

Well that was fast...

2018-06-10 18:41

17-40 jeez

> MagisK trains 2 hours - imgur.com/vnixEbp > MagisK trains 12 hours without rest - imgur.com/a/2SUSgOM

2018-06-10 18:42

Protect NiKo and GuardiaN at all cost. GuardiaN is going to get frustrated and start playing not seriously like with NaVi.

Like NaVi in 2016* Guardian never was and probably never will be as good in FaZe as he was in NaVi in 2015.

2018-06-10 19:24

+1,we could only see his 2015 form at ELEAGUE Boston and IEM Sydney.

2018-06-10 21:43

he is so bad hahah

2018-06-10 18:45

Good try FaZe, you'll get them next time.

2018-06-10 18:46

Expected for the best team in the world.

EASY EZ

2018-06-10 18:50

17-40 LUL

2018-06-10 18:52

Even if you're igl, 17 kills is way not fucking enough

2018-06-10 18:56

b0t karrigan

2018-06-10 19:05

-karrigan +NBK-

2018-06-10 19:07

niko choker LUL

It's almost an impossible situation. How do you get players of that skill to play the way you need them to, to play like Astralis players do, make the right decisions and have the work ethic and attention to detail to get to that level ? These god tier players instinctively frag hunt and play more loose, hes actually done a good job getting a lot out of the team most of the time. But when you play a team like Astralis chances are a lot of rounds someone dies without their skill being a factor, they get rekt by crossfire or utility, or Astralis out trades them or out thinks them.. Put karrigan in a different team maybe secondary AWPer who mostly plays off someone else and gets flashed into top banana to clear it mid round for example. You'll see completely different stats, anyone can get those kills but if someone else is supporting him they aren't able to have the same impact themselves The FaZe lineup cannot for example start back at square one and rebuild, and play the Astralis system. The whole team suffers from the lack of depth in structure and synergy of that type. They can make plays and look amazing but its a whole different game. Hence why new G2 looks to have a lot more potential, the system will create pieces of success across the map round in round out, the average round success rate will be higher and the knockon effect in CSGO is underestimated even by pro players. A lot of players are not cerebral or interested in elaborate team dynamics, they were not brought up to play the game that way and I'm sure some even think it's flawed in the complexity of it all

2018-06-10 19:10

I don't necessarily think that FaZe - or any other team - needs to play like Astralis. Every style has it's pro's and con's, and instead of fitting players into a certain style, the overall team style should support the players' individual style as far as possible. Of course I also do acknowledge that you need some systematics to your play - it cannot all be hit'n'run or spray'n'pray. FaZe is also 'challenged' by their individuality, which in some situations results in frustration and impatience with some of the players, resulting in rash and insurgent decisions. However I do agree with you, that the Astralis has a rare synergy on their team, that stems from their holistic approach to competitive. In my opinion they are miles ahead when it comes to focus on team dynamics and the 'mental' aspect of the game, which is also reflected by their decision to bring in a sports psychologist to work with the team.

2018-06-10 20:40