Valiance send G2 packing in Tours

Valiance are through to the grand final of DreamHack Open Tours are defeating hometown favourites G2 2-1 in the last-four stage.

The series began on G2's map pick, Nuke, where the French side were put on the back foot early on. After winning the pistol round in convincing fashion, Richard "⁠shox⁠" Papillon's team were caught off-guard by Valiance's force buy, showing little respect for Nemanja "⁠nexa⁠" Isaković in a 2v1 situation.

Valiance rode that momentum to a 5-2 lead, once again immediately countering a G2 round victory. Things were looking dire for the French offense, but then François "⁠amanek⁠" Delaunay went huge with a quad kill to put his team back in the game. Valiance struggled to keep the Terrorists at bay for the rest of the half but still managed to come out on top with a narrow 8-7 lead - a dangerous scoreline as they were about to switch to the offense.

The second half quickly became a painful outing for the Serbian side, who could not break through the water-tight G2 defence, with the French side winning nine rounds in a row to take the lead in the series.

Next up was Vertigo, where Valiance looked more solid and better drilled than their opponents during the early stages of the game. The Serbian side ran all over G2 throughout the first half, limiting the home side to just four rounds in what was a great display of power from nexa's troops.

G2 started to come alive after the break thanks to a vintage performance by Kenny "⁠kennyS⁠" Schrub, who offered glimpses of his quality on the Terrorist side with some incredible rounds, one of them a quick quad kill in an anti-eco round that almost fell apart.

The French team went on to take the lead at 13- 12, forcing a timeout by Valiance in a bid to halt the Frenchmen's momentum. The Serbian team then finally broke G2's streak, with Rokas "⁠EspiranTo⁠" Milasauskas pulling off a 1v2 clutch in the following round. That turned out to be the game-winning play: Valiance prevented a reset and wreaked havoc in G2's economy, locking down the map at 16-13 to take the series to Dust2.

G2 had a promising start to the final map, twice string three rounds together, but faded as the game wore on, allowing Valiance to take a 9-6 lead, with Nestor "⁠LETN1⁠" Tanić racking up 21 rounds in the half. The Serbian side carried that momentum into the second half and dominated the early gun rounds, bringing the scoreline to 13-8.

With the threat of elimination looming, G2 went on a massive run off the back of some impressive plays by amanek, and won seven rounds in a row to hit match point. LETN1 once again stepped up to the plate and spearheaded Valiance's efforts, ending the half with 34 kills as his team forced overtime.

Starting out on the CT side, G2 took the lead in the game in a 2-1 half, but a quad-kill by Otto "⁠ottoNd⁠" Sihvo with an AWP turned the game on its head and set Valiance up for a 3-0 run.