Tainted Minds advance to upper bracket final at Asia Minor

Tainted Minds have beaten SCARZ Absolute 2-0, moving on to the upper bracket final at the Asia Minor (16-4 on Nuke and 16-13 on Cache).

Tainted Minds took on SCARZ Absolute in the second upper-bracket semi-final at the Asia Minor. The best-of-three game kicked off on Nuke where the Oceanic team chose to start on the CT-side and won the pistol round thanks to Chris "⁠ofnu⁠" Hanley's triple kill.

SCARZ Absolute hit back in the second round with pistols but Tainted Minds returned the favor in the third round, leading 2-1. It was 8-1 when Koji "⁠Laz⁠" Ushida showed up with two opening kills to give the Japanese their second round.

Tainted Minds won a 2vs3 in the 11th round to make it 9-2 and didn't lose another round in the first half at the end of which they led 13-2. Yaman "⁠yam⁠" Ergenekon's team secured the second half pistol round and went on to close out the map with a 16-4 scoreline.

The Japanese side's pistol round fortunes didn't change on Cache where they started as Ts and lost the pistol round as Ryan "⁠zewsy⁠" Palmer got a quad kill. zewsy clutched a 1vs1 in the first weapon round to make it 4-0.

Too much aggressiveness cost Tainted Minds in the fifth round as SCARZ Absolute got on the scoreboard with four Deagle kills. SCARZ Absolute came back to finish the first half with a 9-6 lead.

Callum "⁠BURNRUOk⁠" Henderson got a quad kill and clutched a 1vs2 in the second half pistol round, giving Tainted Minds their seventh round. ofnu & company reclaimed the lead in the 19th round as they made it 10-9 with the first weapon round victory.

Joshua "⁠INS⁠" Potter clutched a 1vs2 in the 24th round to break the Japanese team's economy as his team led 13-11. Tainted Minds won the map 16-13 and took the series 2-0 to advance to the upper bracket final where they will play TYLOO for a spot at the Major. SCARZ Absolute, on the other hand, will take on Renegades in the lower bracket to stay alive in the tournament.