Heroic and Virtus.pro triumph in Katowice group stage openers

The Danes edged out a close series against OG, whilst Virtus.pro took advantage of two slow starts by Copenhagen Flames.

The IEM Katowice group stage kicked off with two entertaining series, with HEROIC taking down OG 2-1 in an intense battle and Virtus.pro putting Copenhagen Flames to bed 2-0.

OG made a few too many small mistakes to get over the line in their series, and HEROIC were ruthless in exposing them, particularly on the final map of Inferno. As for Copenhagen Flames, they had two shocking first halves in their series, a stark departure from their performance in the Play-in, where they overran the opposition.

The A stream hosted the anticipated matchup between OG and HEROIC, an international squad on a hot streak with their new IGL and a Danish roster seeking to improve on the stagnation that they ended 2021 with.

The first map of the series was the OG pick of Ancient, and they started terribly on the favoured CT side of their own map; HEROIC were incredibly successful in finding opening kills, and OG were struggling individually, falling to a 1-9 deficit. It was at this point that Nikolaj "⁠niko⁠" Kristensen and Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan came to life, picking up a series of multi-kills and impact frags each to drag their team to a 6-9 half.

Moving into second half OG were clearly warmed up, and flipped the script by winning seven of the first eight to put themselves on 13 and in the driver's seat to take the map. HEROIC then managed to put some rounds together, largely off the back of key kills from Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund, to get themselves up to 14-13; once again niko and flameZ decided to put their teammates on their backs, picking up key frags to grab the last few rounds and secure a narrow 16-14 win.

Overpass started as well as Ancient had ended for OG, and they ran up a 6-2 lead early with some bold plays on the defence, often heavily stacking B and getting the better of early duels there; Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså in particular started hot.

Once the early duels started to shift in HEROIC's favour the defence became more passive, and HEROIC took advantage of the extra space and started finding more success. Ismail "⁠refrezh⁠" Ali and stavn were monsters for the Danish squad, granting their team a slim 8-7 half win.

HEROIC continued their strong run into the second half, getting themselves all the way to 15-9 before OG really mounted a serious offence; by then it was too late, the Danes closing out the map 16-12 and taking the series to the decider.

The intense battle of this series continued onto Inferno, with HEROIC opening this one on the front foot; they bagged themselves an 8-2 lead on their T half off the back of a pistol win. OG managed to find some fight, largely due to some high impact frags from Mateusz "⁠mantuu⁠" Wilczewski, picking up four of the next five to earn a 6-9 score going into the second period.

OG won an all-important T pistol and converted to a 10-9 lead before the Danes came online, and come online they did; Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller did a great job reading the OG attack, and it seemed HEROIC had all the right setups to counter OG. The international squad did manage to find a few more rounds towards the end of the half, but it wasn't enough as HEROIC secured a 16-13 victory on the map and a 2-1 victory in the series.

That result sends OG down to the lower bracket where they await the loser of the series between MOUZ and Vitality; OG will play that elimination game on Friday at 16:00 . HEROIC will move on to play the winner of the aforementioned series, with that game also taking place on Friday at 16:00 .

The B stream was host to Copenhagen Flames taking on Virtus.pro, with both teams looking to capitalise on strong recent runs of form, Flames at the play-in and VP during the recent ESL Challenger event.

The series opened on the Danes' pick of Vertigo and they were made to immediately regret their pick as they started woefully on their T side, struggling to get anything going and falling 3-12 to a Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis inspired defence from the CIS squad.

The second half was better, with Flames bouncing back after a pistol loss to run the score back to 13-8 to make the map competitive, but unfortunately they had left themselves simply too much to do, and eventually Virtus.pro put together a few T rounds to take the first map relatively comfortably, 16-9.

Next up was the Virtus.pro pick of Inferno, and once again Copenhagen Flames completely hamstrung themselves with a terrible first half, this time on their CT side. Virtus.pro were slick and coordinated in their attack, with Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev being a constant menace with his aggressive lurks, and Flames struggled to read their counterparts; this earned Virtus.pro an 11-4 score at the half.

Realistically the Danes again had too much to do in the second half but they were again much improved, with Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen stepping up and contributing after a particularly poor CT side individually, providing more support to the stellar performances of Nico "⁠nicoodoz⁠" Tamjidi and Rasmus "⁠Zyphon⁠" Nordfoss. This time they managed to make it ten rounds before the VP defence came online, the CIS squad closing out the game 16-10 and the series 2-0 to send their Danish opposition down to the lower bracket.

Copenhagen Flames play the loser of the Ninjas in Pyjamas vs Gambit series on Friday at 19:30 , with Virtus.pro awaiting the winner of that series for an upper bracket game at the same time, same day.