Players and Astralis secure wins as round 1 ends

21-4-2022 15:44

The first round of matches has come to an end with the favored teams getting their wins.

With all teams having now played a game, we have a rough idea about the form of each squad coming into the tournament. After an upset-filled first four matches, the next four games went according to expectations with favorites prevailing in all of them, meaning that Players, Astralis, Copenhagen Flames and ENCE join the 1-0 pool of teams.

dycha's ENCE team kept up their good form from previous tournaments

In what was a fairly one sided affair, we had Players meet the underdogs of Sangal on Overpass. The Russian team went into the match as massive favorites, no doubt even bigger ones due to the fact that their opponents had to use their coach to replace one of their starting five. The match went according to expectations, with Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov powering his team to a 11-0 lead, before Sangal were able to get on the board and at least make the score respectable, in the end managing to get seven rounds.

The game between Astralis and ASG followed a similar pattern, with the favored Danish team winning the first half of Ancient 12-3. After winning the pistol round, ASG had a chance to make it a closer game but Benjamin "⁠blameF⁠" Bremer's 26 kill performance ensured that Astralis comfortably closed out the game.

Next up was ENCE meeting Spirit on Mirage, where ENCE were slow out of the gates, going down 5-1 before they managed to get the game under control. After that, they were able to get nine rounds in a row with a complete lock-out of the Spirit attacks. ENCE were able to keep a healthy advantage throughout the second half, beating their opponents 16-11.

In the last game of the round we had Copenhagen Flames facing off against Sprout, where we got yet another map of Ancient. The European mix team were forced to use their coach Danny "⁠BERRY⁠" Krüger as a temporary replacement for Victor "⁠Staehr⁠" Staehr who misses out due to illness. Despite that, they were able to get a decent start due to their pistol round win and convert it to a respectable 11-4 scoreline on the less favored terrorist side of Ancient. After winning another pistol round and an anti-eco ace by Danny "⁠BERRY⁠" Krüger, Sprout were starting to get back into the game. The Danish squad proved too strong however, winning the map 16-11 in the end.