TyLoo, Tainted Minds march on in Group B

TYLOO and Tainted Minds have moved on to Group B's winners' match at the Asia Minor after defeating 5POWER and Uniquestars, respectively, in close matches.

The opening match of the day in London started with 5POWER taking the initial pistol round on the back of a successful A execute, but there was no follow-up as TYLOO replied with CZs, setting themselves up for a 2-1 lead.

Against all expectations, TYLOO dropped the pace and let the offensive side take control of proceedings. The Chinese team were on the back foot for most of the half, but still laboured hard to bring the deficit to a solitary round by the end of the half.

Now playing on the Terrorist side, TYLOO overcame the deficit after taking the pistol round and the subsequent anti-ecos. 5POWER did not wish to let the game slip away, however, and immediately restored parity after taking two rounds, the first of which thanks to a 1v2 clutch from Andrew "⁠kaze⁠" Khong on the B site.

It looked like the rest of the game would be a close affair, but instead it became a one-way street as TYLOO ran riot, dropping just one more round before locking down the map in the 27th round thanks to a 1v2 clutch from HaoWen "⁠somebody⁠" Xu.

The following match, also on Inferno, quickly got out of hand for Uniquestars as any round that they took was quickly countered with a round by Tainted Minds, who looked to be well in control of the action.

It was only when they were down 3-9 that the Uniquestars finally switched on, with the Israeli side winning three rounds straight on the back of great individual actions from Lidor "⁠LaNrefNi⁠" Almasi and Daniel "⁠ponkt⁠" Punkt.

Uniquestars used that newly-found momentum to go on a great run in the second half, winning the pistol round with a straight B push, the following anti-ecos, and the first full gun round after overturning a 2v4 situation.

Things were starting to look bleak for Tainted Minds, but then they picked up the pace and hit map point without losing any more rounds. The Australian defence then finally cracked, but Yaman "⁠yam⁠" Ergenekon's side would not let a comeback happen and wrapped things up before the game reached its 30th round.