VP best 5POWER at EPICENTER 2018 Wild Card

After shutting out 5POWER in the first map (Train), Virtus.pro narrowly won Dust2 to reach the upper bracket final of the EPICENTER 2018 Wild Card tournament.

The first series in Moscow started out on Virtus.pro's pick, Train, where 5POWER initially won the pistol as CTs, but saw the triumph wane as the round had to be restarted on the back of a technical problem.

After a prolonged break, the Chinese/Mongolian side couldn't replicate the original round as the Poles won the redo pistol round cleanly. Filip "⁠NEO⁠" Kubski's troops quickly capitalised on the great start and went 5-0 before 5POWER took a tactical pause. This didn't help them, though, as Virtus.pro continued to cruise ahead, reaching a 9-0 lead before the Poles agreed to restart a round in which players experienced high latencies.

No technical pause could stop Jarosław "⁠pashaBiceps⁠" Jarząbkowski and co., though, as they went all the way to the break without giving up a single round. The Poles completed the 16-0 dream soon after, as they won the second pistol round on the CT-side.

Next up was 5POWER's pick Dust2, where Virtus.pro once again got off to a great start as Terrorists, as they won the first pistol round as well as the following anti-eco. Finally, the Chinese/Mongolian side put themselves on the board in their first gun round, and Wei "⁠shuadapai⁠" Wang evened out the score in the following by managing a quad-kill with the M4A1.

NEO's men then reset their opponents by winning the next pair and once again started to pull ahead, eventually reaching a 8-4 lead before 5POWER crawled back in the half thanks to great play from the AWP'er shuadapai, who got yet another 4k in the 14th round. The Poles would still come out on top before the switch, though, as they lead 9-6 before being moved to the CT-side.

5POWER won the second pistol round as well as the following, in which Virtus.pro bought up without luck. The Chinese/Mongolian side then evened out the scored 9-9 and even surpassed their Polish opponents, reaching an 11-9 lead. The match became a close fight, as the teams continued to trade rounds all the way up to 14-14. Virtus.pro had an economical advantage at this point, though, and quickly won the last two rounds to win Dust2 16-14 and the series 2-0