Astralis edge out ENCE in three-map series

21-3-2020 01:48

Despite being contested by ENCE on all three maps, Astralis were able to overcome the Finnish side and secure the 2-1 victory in ESL Pro League Season 11.

Ranked #2 in the world, Astralis were overwhelming favorites to win the series, despite their shocking 2-0 loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the opening match of the tournament. On the other hand, ENCE have continued their struggles by opening Pro League with losses to Spirit and Vitality, witha bounce-back not expected in the game against Astralis.

However, the series ended up being a back-and-forth one, with ENCE recovering from slow starts on all three maps. In the end, Astralis secured the narrow victory thanks to a 10-round streak on the final map, Overpass.

dupreeh's impressive performance on Dust2 was crucial to Astralis' win

Dust2 kicked off with a 5-0 lead for Astralis, but ENCE didn't let the Danes run away with the scoreline so easily. Playing on the Terrorist side, ENCE came back into the half by winning eight of the next nine rounds to finish the half with a minimal lead, 8-7. Aleksi "⁠allu⁠" Jalli's men took the lead after the switch thanks to the pistol round win, but it was all about Astralis in the rifle rounds. The Danish side closed out the game, 16-13, as Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen led the way with 33 frags.

Inferno followed a similar pattern to Dust2, Astralis won the early game (6-3 as Terrorists), but ENCE were able to wake up and claim the lead before the switch. In the second half, Astralis ran away with the lead by putting up strong defenses, but they were unable to close out the game from 14-9 up as ENCE mounted a miraculous comeback to force map 3, Overpass.

On the decider, Jere "⁠sergej⁠" Salo continued his strong play to bring ENCE back from another slow start (0-4) to a respectable 9-6 lead after the CT half. sergej's triple secured the second pistol round for the Finns, but Astralis mustered a force-buy win and started to build momentum on the defense. In the end, Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander and co. closed out the map without losing a single round on the CT side (16-10) to secure their second Pro League victory of the season.

ESL Pro League Season 11 EuropeBest of 3

Astralis

Matchpage

20th March 2020

ENCE

Dust2

Inferno

Overpass

Astralis	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth Xyp9x	63 - 46	+17	82.8	77.6%	1.26
Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen dupreeh	70 - 57	+13	91.2	77.6%	1.26
Emil 'Magisk' Reif Magisk	59 - 49	+10	73.4	76.5%	1.14
Nicolai 'device' Reedtz device	55 - 50	+5	66.6	78.8%	1.09
Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander gla1ve	51 - 53	-2	70.8	80.0%	1.05

ENCE	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating2.0
Jere 'sergej' Salo sergej	65 - 57	+8	79.7	72.9%	1.13
Miikka 'suNny' Kemppi suNny	55 - 62	-7	66.2	71.8%	0.96
Sami 'xseveN' Laasanen xseveN	49 - 58	-9	66.5	61.2%	0.89
Jani 'Aerial' Jussila Aerial	44 - 67	-23	65.6	71.8%	0.88
Aleksi 'allu' Jalli allu	41 - 54	-13	55.2	64.7%	0.81

With the third set of ESL Pro League S11 Group A matches played out, this is how the standings look like:

Group A

TEAM

Astralis and Ence both playing bad!

2020-03-21 01:49

14 replies

online, dude doesnt matter ence would go last in a lan tournemant and astralis would be top4 like always

2020-03-21 01:52

11 replies

dane here OMEGALUL

2020-03-21 01:53

3 replies

NA dude talking? lol

2020-03-21 01:55

1 reply

Edged

2020-03-21 04:46

But still he's right

2020-03-21 08:30

ence is actually really consistent. They go last online and on lan.

2020-03-21 01:54

ass :D

2020-03-21 02:49

2020-03-21 02:53

2020-03-21 10:54

Online matter pretty much rn tardface

2020-03-21 11:16

ENCE has always been shit online tho. Even at their peak.

2020-03-21 17:19

true

2020-03-21 02:16

goldnova??

2020-03-21 08:24

ENCE LUL

ENCE disband soon

2020-03-21 01:50

7 replies

Why disband? They're judt having fun, even got 1 map off astralis

2020-03-21 08:23

6 replies

If you think they are having fun atm, you are not very bright.. You better believe they are all discussing contracts and sweating like mad. They know that everyone thinks they fucked up bad, and now they can do nothing to win back any honor or money for that matter.. They've always been a horribly bad team of uninspired players. They just happened to have a good igl. Now they have Allu.. the all-time-worst player in cs history, and he thinks that he can lead a team xD I kinda enjoy their pathetic attempt at doing anything.

2020-03-21 10:19

5 replies

nice for u to talk but u have no idea about them or about what is happening inside the team, and i guess u have never even played in a top team so.... u have no clue! :) happy saturday

2020-03-21 11:26

4 replies

You sir, have no knowledge of my involvement in the pro scene. You are correct in your assumptions though. So then let's assume that none of us are former top players or are involved with ence management.. In that case noone on the entire Internet have ever had a valid reason to discuss anything on hltv.. Do you agree with this statement, or is this more a case of people talking about their thought on the matter(qualified or not)? You too have a great Saturday! :)

2020-03-21 12:12

I guess you didn't know who you were talking to? Anyway, at times ENCE played rather good against Astralis so I don't see why you would comment like that. Well, I can see it when I read your analysis: "always been a horribly bad team of uninspired players, they just happened to have a good igl". Way to negate the entire careers of players' who are obviously are tier1 players if you can see anything past this "I'm a fan of this top team from my country and they beat these other guys so the other guys must obviously suck" mentality. Actually you're negating all the skill and hard work of Astralis as well. Not to mention the countless of pretty good players from your country who are still worse than ENCE. You just have no clue about what you're talking about. You don't need to be a former top player or part of ENCE management to know that. Nobody prevents you from commenting whatever you want but I wouldn't act surprised if people react when you spew come complete bs...

2020-03-21 15:03

2020-03-21 15:26

You know that "ENCE is having fun" is a meme right?

2020-03-21 17:20

nt ENCE, expected worse

nice

nt ence bettors

Go ASTRALIS

expected

Thats was actually close, didnt expect ENCE get 10 rounds on each map here, but looks like Astralis not in good form, especially device

If Astralis has to "edge out" an online Ence, they have officially fallen off

2020-03-21 01:51

13 replies

online ence > lan ence lan astralis > online astralis BUT STILL online astralis > online ence but who actually cares about online xd

online ence was so bad they dropped out of MDL and that was WITH aleksib

2020-03-21 03:18

They dropped out for other qualifiers, and there wasn’t a promotion in that season of MDL, this was after second place at Katowice major.

2020-03-21 04:57

You have no idea what you are talking about

2020-03-21 08:34

Actually online ence have always been so much worse than lan ence

2020-03-21 12:33

2020-03-21 17:21

+111 idk how people are still highballing Astralis. They havent done anything impressive in 2020 yet. They are not winning the next major. It's probably going to be fnatic but let's see.

I mean who did anything impressive in 2020 except navi? no one, because there are no fucking tournemants ^^

2020-03-21 01:56

Ence have impressed me with how bad they are.

2020-03-21 02:09

2 replies

2020-03-21 10:42

navi g2 or faze maybe even CoL if Jason Lake puts enough money down

2020-03-21 03:19

+1 true

2020-03-21 11:58

Ence winrate 16% in the last 3 months omegalul

allu ak spray LULW

nt ence

2020-03-21 02:04

K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 55 - 62 -7 66.2 0.95 Miikka 'FiRePoWeR' Kemppi

12 replies

Did you completely miss the players below him? He was fine in this series.

2020-03-21 02:30

dude is suppose to be the extra firepower of the team, you know the whole reason aleksi was benched? im making fun of the shit roster move

Bad comedic timing on your part then, fact is they played three close maps against Astralis whilst suNny was their 2nd highest rated player in the game.

2020-03-21 12:43

>supposed to be the hard carry of the team to compensate for the lack of IGL <rating under 1

2020-03-21 09:57

He performed ok, Aerial is also supposed to be the star rifler but he was rather underwhelming here.

2020-03-21 12:41

Aerial is not the star rifler

2020-03-21 14:10

He is according to his team, go back and read the early interviews.

2020-03-21 14:11

Link or bs. I have never heard anyone call him the star rifler

2020-03-21 14:12

Early interview where I think it was allu and/or Aleksi who broke down the different roles in the team, can't remember if it was even on HLTV or some other site. They basically had classified sergej and Aerial as the "stars" of the team, who you could expect to deliver fragwise. Can't find the interview after some searching, possibly was on some other site. This is common knowledge though, the team thinks highly of Aerial ever since this iteration of ENCE was created.

2020-03-21 14:19

Yeah I remember someone saying aerial was fragging hard in scrims. Was a long while ago at this point, maybe in katowice so a lot of things could have changed.

Allu underperformed in this series pretty hard, IF someone has to be the scapegoat for this loss it should be him. Was a good fight they put in.

2020-03-21 10:20

+1 true had they allu performing well an ez 2-0 4 EZ4ENCE

2020-03-21 12:01

#EnceNeverWin

2020-03-21 02:17

Surprised ENCE weren't absolutely wrecked

Ence with the dominating 8 game loss streak, damn dude

Axaxaxa, 3 maps vs Ence lol

2020-03-21 02:25

Even random globals can ‘edge out’ ENCE these days...Astralis playing so bad idk what happened to them

2020-03-21 02:26

Even when they play bad.. They can still make every team sweat xD thats the funny part and its scary

2020-03-21 04:00

any team? NP just ran over them 2 days ago makin it seem like a globals vs DMGs match

2020-03-21 04:11

Yes any team

2020-03-21 04:13

ence is improving, there is a light on the end of the tunnel

ence is finnish version of mibr

2020-03-21 07:11

+1 last two matches unexpected maps wins against 2 good teams and hard fought 4 3rd map even #EZ4ENCE

2020-03-21 12:03

2020-03-21 04:59

Didn’t expect that from ENCE tbh ggs!

2020-03-21 08:12

Close one ence!

2020-03-21 08:20

I saw a guy on reddit who said that ence would play well if they played vs better teams, and he got downvoted to hell lol

respect to ENCE for actually showing up at this bo3 and playing some good cs.

2020-03-21 08:38

+1 Ignorant haters still chewing them up, three close maps against astralis is no accident

2020-03-21 12:45

When ence disband ?

2020-03-21 08:40

Why

2020-03-21 10:03

Soooo bad

2020-03-21 13:06

After major

2020-03-21 12:35

Save sergej

2020-03-21 09:58

Actually a lot better performance from ENCE than before. Still not enough though.

2020-03-21 11:22

GOD XYP9X BIGGEST CARRY

2020-03-21 12:00

luckstralis

2020-03-21 12:17

Not sure if Astralis was bad or ENCE actually better than in long time. ENCE seemed to hit their shots nicely but Astralis had also threw some situations badly.

2020-03-21 12:24

2020-03-21 13:16

You know Astralis is in a really bad state when they struggle to beat ENCE over a 3 maps course...

2020-03-21 13:44

3 close maps damn

2020-03-21 13:59

ence getting better, gg astralis

2020-03-21 16:43

Good match. ENCE did well. With those type of strats and shooting they'll be a highly competitive team again as long as they can iron out those inconsistencies and losing advantageous situations too often.

2020-03-21 17:29