Vitality, NiP go 2-1 in Katowice

Vitality and Ninjas in Pyjamas have moved into the 2-1 pool in IEM Katowice's New Legends Stage after defeating Cloud9 and HellRaisers, respectively.

The Mirage match between Vitality, who were playing this map for the third consecutive time in this stage, and Cloud9 kicked off with Jordan "⁠Zellsis⁠" Montemurro finding a triple-kill to stop a retake from the defense. After building up their economy, the Frenchmen quickly levelled the score at 3-3.

Cloud9 still won two of the next four, but they simply could not capitalize on their successful rounds, with Vitality bagging a 9-6 half-time lead fairly easily.

Just like in the first half, Zellsis came up huge in the pistol round, this time around with a quad-kill, setting his team up for a three-round streak. The 20-year-old then could not stop a B execution with just pistols, however, and Vitality kept breaking through the defense after that, bringing the scoreline to 13-9.

Cloud9 did not back down and strung four rounds together to restore parity in the match. Vitality seemed set to take the lead in the following round with nothing but pistols, but Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist pulled off a 1v4 post-plant clutch. Still, Nathan "⁠NBK-⁠" Schmitt's men won the next round, leaving Cloud9 cash-strapped and ultimately unable to keep the French side from running away with the match.

Starting out as Counter-Terrorists on Overpass, Ninjas in Pyjamas picked up the pistol round on the back of a clean quad-kill from Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner, with the Swedes following that up with the subsequent anti-ecos and the first gun round to go up 4-0. Even though HellRaisers then won a near-flawless round, they were immediately countered by Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman's troops.

It was only in the 13th round that HellRaisers managed to get their second round on the board thanks to a successful 1v2 from Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz, but Ninjas in Pyjamas would not let them win any more rounds until half-time.

Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker opened up the action in the second half with a quad-kill, inspiring HellRaisers to make a slight comeback, but that was simply too little, too late, as Ninjas in Pyjamas responded on a shoddy buy before putting together a string of rounds to wrap things up.