Astralis defeat Cloud9; Liquid breeze past FaZe in Miami

Astralis extended their win streak on Inferno by taking down Cloud9 16-10, while Liquid looked dominant against FaZe, securing a 16-5 win on Nuke.

Cloud9 started their debut match by winning the T pistol on Inferno, but then fumbled against the force-buy of Astralis which Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth clutched from a 1v3 situation. The American team didn't falter, though, and got back on track with a B push and William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba getting a double.

Cloud9 managed a 4-2 lead before the Danes started tying rounds together, with Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander and Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif's quad-kills in back-to-back rounds seeing the round tied at 4-4. Astralis continued their streak up to 8-4, when a fast A site push worked for Cloud9, but that was all they managed in a while. Astralis finished the half 10-5, up, grabbed the second pistol, and then Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen managed a 1v4 clutch to deny Cloud9's force-buy.

After gla1ve and co. reached map point, Cloud9 managed to compose themselves and fight back, with B site lockdowns and Timothy "⁠autimatic⁠" Ta's proactivity proving crucial to that. In the end, Astralis found a kill on autimatic and followed that up with an A execute to find the final round and win the match 16-10.

After a 3-0 start for FaZe on the CT side of Nuke, the European side struggled to hold off Liquid, with Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip's quad kill in round 7 giving the North American side the lead. from that point onwards, FaZe only mustered two more rounds as CT: one hard fought-one, and a complete lockdown thanks to Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's triple.

Going into the second half 10-5 down, FaZe was in dire need of a pistol round win, but didn't manage it, and the early buy fell flat as well. Liquid had no issues closing out the match swiftly from there, 16-5, not allowing the Europeans a single T round on the map.