HellRaisers dominate Renegades; Astralis ease past ViCi in Odense

In the first best-of-one series at the ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals, HellRaisers overran Renegades 16-5 on Mirage, while Astralis comfortably beat ViCi 16-8 on Inferno after a slow start by the Danes.

In the Group A opener, Renegades and HellRaisers went head-to-head on Mirage, where Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz helped his Terrorists side win the pistol by taking down three, after which their new man Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov got a quad-kill to secure the second round.

Kyrylo "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow’s men looked well-prepared for the matchup against the Australian side, as they strung together rounds in dominating fashion to eventually reach a massive 10-0 lead. Renegades finally put themselves on the board on the back of a triple-kill with the AWP by Justin "⁠jks⁠" Savage, who repeated the feat with three more in the next to put his team at two rounds. Issa "⁠ISSAA⁠" Murad would one-up him in the fourteenth round with a quad-kill, as HellRaisers easily finished off the half with a convincing 13-2 lead.

Now on the defensive, ISSAA once again impressed in the second pistol round by killing three and defusing the bomb to put HellRaisers only two rounds from the map win. ANGE1 then managed his own triple in the following round to get them to match point, with Renegades getting the next three rounds before the Ukranian leader and his men closed out Mirage 16-5.

WingHei "⁠Freeman⁠" Cheung became the hero for his team in the first pistol in ViCi's seemingly impossible Inferno matchup against Astralis by killing three and defusing the bomb to win the round. The Danes bought up in the second, but couldn't convert it, which quickly put them at a 0-3 deficit.

Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander's men then bought up again, and this time succeeded in hitting bomb sites a couple of rounds in a row on the back of multi-kills by Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, and eventually tied up the score at 3-3. Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz then put Astralis in the lead with a big triple-kill coming out of boiler room. They eventually reached six rounds before ViCi picked them apart in the tenth round to put themselves at 4-6. A close 1v1 fight between gla1ve and Andrew "⁠kaze⁠" Khong in the following round ended up with the latter on top, as the Malaysian took down the Danish captain to reach a triple in the round.

Astralis then picked up the pace once again to win the next trio of rounds with device getting two AK-47 multi-kill rounds in the last two to put the Danes on nine. The 23-year-old found himself in a 1v2 situation in the final round of the half, but was killed by Freeman, who secured a 6-9 deficit before the switch.

gla1ve's troops won the second pistol round to reach double digits and also reached eleven rounds on the back of a quad-kill with the AUG by device, but ViCi then won the next pair, the first including Freeman getting a 4k of his own with the AK-47. Astralis then kicked things up a notch on their famous CT-side of Inferno by winning four rounds in a row to take the map 16-8.