fnatic edge out Heroic

fnatic have survived the second elimination match of ESL Pro League Season 10 Finals, sending HEROIC home after a nail-biting series (Inferno 9-16, Vertigo 16-13, Overpass 16-13).

The Swedes narrowly escaped a last-place exit, recovering from a poor start to the series as they lost Inferno and at one point were down 3-7 on the second map, Vertigo, sending home HEROIC despite the Danes' respectable effort.

fnatic picked Inferno as the first map and were the ones to start off the better, securing a 4-1 lead as Terrorists on the back of Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin's quad-kill in the opening pistol round. Things soon turned sour for the Swedish side, however, as HEROIC looked in great form from then on, grabbing eight out of the last ten rounds for a 9-6 half.

Putting up a quad-kill of his own, Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer kickstarted the second half for the Danes, who went on to struggle in the first couple of gunrounds but quickly found a gap in the defenses, upsetting fnatic's economy to rally to a comfortable 16-9 victory to start off the elimination series.

Vertigo was up next as a map that fnatic had only recently started playing and it began with the two teams trading round by round with forcebuys until it was 3-3, when HEROIC broke the streak and ran away with five consecutive rounds as a result for a 7-3 lead on the T side.The Swedes recovered late with four out of the last five much thanks to Brollan, who clutched a 1v2 along the way to help his team lower the deficit to just one round by the end of the opening half.

Once on the offense, fnatic got off to a great start to reach double digits, but as the game reached the late stages things got difficult, as HEROIC destroyed their economy to reclaim the lead at 13-12. Nonetheless, Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim's squad pulled through in the end, with the in-game leader closing it at 16-13 with a quad-kill.

The forcebuy wars happened again at the beginning of Overpass, although this time they ended much more quickly, with HEROIC coming out on top on the CT side. A halfbuy win swung momentum back in fnatic's favor, as they went on a five-round streak, and the Danes responded with three, but it was still the Swedish side that came away with the better half thanks to a few close retake scenarios on the B bombsite.

Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller & co. got away with the first five rounds on the second half, but they found it difficult to stay in the lead, courtesy of quad-kills from Robin "⁠flusha⁠" Rönnquist and Brollan, with the latter pushing fnatic to match point and soon the 16-13 victory.