MAD Lions eliminate fnatic in DreamHack Masters Spring

The Danes will hope to continue their lower bracket run against NAVI on Thursday.

MAD Lions are through to the lower bracket semi-finals of DreamHack Masters Spring following a 2-1 victory over fnatic. The series began with two lop-sided maps as the teams cruised through their respective map picks. Mirage, which had been the stage for the previous best-of-one encounter between these two teams, just ten days ago, initially looked to be a keenly-contested affair before MAD Lions put up a near-flawless offensive display.

After a rough start to the tournament, with defeats to BIG and Complexity, the Danes are finally starting to show their real quality. They will now turn their attention to Thursday's encounter with Natus Vincere in what will be the first-ever clash between these two teams.

A dream start from MAD Lions on Nuke saw the Danish team cruise to a 5-0 lead on the Terrorist side of the map. fnatic looked shell-shocked, unable to sustain the pressure, but then Jesper "⁠JW⁠" Wecksell came to the team's rescue with three kills with a saved AWP in an eco round. The Swedish team seemed to have overcome that sluggish start as they put together a string of rounds, but MAD Lions quickly regained control and stayed in command for an 11-4 half.

Now playing on the T side, fnatic bought some breathing room with a fast ramp execute in the pistol round. The Swedish team went on to add the next two rounds, but the tone of the game changed once MAD Lions had money to work with. Asger "⁠AcilioN⁠" Larsen's troops kept their defense tight and compact for the rest of the game, locking down the map in the 23rd round after Frederik "⁠acoR⁠" Gyldstrand had put the team on map point with a quad-kill.

fnatic looked a completely different side on Train — their strongest map in the last three months — as they surged to a 13-2 lead after a superb offensive display. Confidence was now rippling through the Swedish team, who built on that by securing the following pistol round with some spectacular one-taps by Maikil "⁠Golden⁠" Selim and Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin. It was only when MAD Lions were facing map point that they finally managed to chain some rounds together, but their efforts proved futile as fnatic quickly wrapped things up.

Things looked bleak for fnatic as they entered Mirage, where they had lost their previous encounter with MAD Lions, but they dominated large stretches of the first half with a strong T side to head into the break with a three-round lead. But the Swedes' defense proved to be vulnerable: even Brollan, who had racked up 16 frags in the first half, was a bystander as the Danes came out of the break with all guns blazing, with acoR and Lucas "⁠Bubzkji⁠" Andersen combining for 27 frags as the team went on a 10-1 run in this one-sided second half.