FaZe and NiP advance to BLAST Pro Series grand final

FaZe came back from behind to beat Cloud9 16-14 on Inferno, while Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated Liquid 16-11 on Mirage, with the two winners now through to the grand final in Copenhagen before the round robin is finalized.

Having surprised Na`Vi with a tie on Train in the third round at the beginning of day two, Cloud9 continued their recovery from a poor start to the tournament while facing the dominant-looking FaZe side, who were just one win away from locking down a spot in the grand final.

The two teams met on Inferno, with the North American squad picking up an early 4-0 lead on the back of Damian "⁠daps⁠" Steele's 1v2 clutch, denying FaZe a second-round forcebuy that had been so effective for them up to that point at the event.

Although Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and company lowered the deficit to just one afterward, Cloud9 responded with a dominant B defense, followed by their adversaries running out time, en route to eight rounds. However, the streak stopped there, with FaZe pulling it back to just a one-round difference to end the half.

Once on the Terrorist side, Cloud9 were back in control early on with a 5-0 streak, denying another one of FaZe's post-pistol forcebuy attempts. However, NiKo's quad-kill on A set off a streak for his team, who went on to dominate in the late stages of the game, conceding just one round en route to a 16-14 win and a spot in the grand final.

Over on the C stream, Ninjas in Pyjamas and Liquid battled on Mirage, with the Swedes unable to capitalize on a pistol round win as they went down 1-5 from there on, with Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken turning around a 1v4 afterplant scenario to give his team an edge on the offense.

Ninjas in Pyjamas began to recover thanks to Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson's triple-kill and with Patrik "⁠f0rest⁠" Lindberg leading the way, they managed to claw back to a respectable seven rounds despite Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski's huge performance that saw him end up on 22 kills before switching over to the defense.

When the sides switched, Ninjas in Pyjamas took control of the proceedings courtesy of Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner's and Nicolas "⁠Plopski⁠" Gonzalez Zamora's impact, reaching 13 rounds unanswered and soon a 14th when f0rest's triple-kill turned over a 2v4 afterplant scenario on B.

Although Liquid went on to claim double digits, the Swedes managed to close out the map before it got dangerous thanks to more multikills from f0rest and Plopski, securing a final appearance with their third victory in the round robin.

With the fifth round yet to be played, the grand final matchup is already set as no one can catch up to FaZe and Ninjas in Pyjamas anymore. The standings currently look as follows: