mousesports outlast GODSENT to reach DreamHack Masters Winter grand final

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen's charges locked down their first grand final appearance since adding Aurimas "⁠Bymas⁠" Pipiras after a hard-fought victory.

MOUZ came back from a map down to defeat GODSENT 2-1 and advance to the grand final of DreamHack Masters Winter Europe. Luka "⁠emi⁠" Vuković’s squad looked primed to win the series after extending their Nuke win streak to seven and holding a 13-10 lead on Mirage, but MOUZ fought back to force a decider. GODSENT came flying out of the gates on Inferno with a 7-0 start, but they soon ran out of steam as karrigan’s troops flipped the map on its head to commandingly claim a 16-10 victory.

MOUZ' win means they have reached their first grand final since ESL Pro League Season 11 back in April, and their first with Bymas on the roster. They will battle it out with the winner of Astralis and FURIA on Sunday at 21:00 in the best-of-five grand final clash.

MOUZ earned an early 4-1 lead on the defensive side of Nuke, GODSENT’s map pick, but an on-point Asger "⁠Farlig⁠" Jensen won a 1v2 to break the bank of his opponents to push his team to a 6-4 scoreline. MOUZ finally stabilised once a double AWP setup came out to shut down a series of A site hits to level the score, with a David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský quad kill edging his team ahead. With the momentum now in their favour, the CTs secured all but one of the remaining rounds to head into the midway point with a narrow 8-7 advantage.

The second half opened up with the two teams trading two rounds apiece before Martin "⁠STYKO⁠" Styk stood tall in a B site hold to pick up a 4K and put GODSENT in the driver’s seat. Down 10-14, MOUZ responded with a trio of rounds, but another standout round from STYKO in a clutch scenario put his team on map point, and a 16-13 score swiftly followed to cap off a strong team performance.

GODSENT won the Mirage pistol in dominant fashion but failed to follow it up as MOUZ instantly replied with Deagles. However, the momentary setback didn’t faze the CTs as emi and co. stamped their authority on the map to storm to a 6-1 lead. MOUZ eventually found gaps in the defence to string together rounds of their own and it was difficult to stop them once they got the ball rolling. karrigan’s side secured six consecutive rounds in the tail end of the half to lead by a solitary round at halftime.

A frozen triple kill in the pistol was quickly made a distant memory as GODSENT put up a commanding T side early on, locking down six of the next seven rounds. An outrageous Deagle quad kill from Bymas allowed for MOUZ to get a grasp on the half and it proved to be a key turning point. The young Lithuanian continued to post multi-kill rounds as MOUZ edged out GODSENT 16-13 to tie the series.

Back-to-back clutches from STYKO got GODSENT off to a great start on Inferno, with the Slovakian rifler spearheading his team to flawless 7-0 lead. MOUZ recomposed to put together a water-tight defence moving forward to chip away at the deficit, eventually edging ahead at the half switch after completing a perfect eight-round response.

Despite losing the second-half pistol, MOUZ carried their momentum over to the T side to bulldoze their way through the GODSENT defence and rapidly hit series point at 15-8. A couple of impactful rounds from Farlig added two to his team's tally before MOUZ closed the map out 16-10 to win the contest.