Heroic take down MOUZ to qualify for IEM Cologne's group stage

MOUZ's lackluster attacking sides played a big part in their relegation to the lower bracket.

HEROIC defeated MOUZ in a three map series to secure their place in the IEM Cologne group stage, with both teams winning the opponent's map pick before the Nuke decider went in favor of the Danes.

HEROIC, whose newest addition Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard had an impressive series, are the first team to get through the play-in and will now have one day off before they play the first match of the next stage on Thursday.

MOUZ's struggles came on the T sides of all three maps played in the series and they will have to rectify their issues quickly if they are to have a chance to advance further in the tournament. when they face the winner of the match between MIBR and TYLOO on Wednesday for a spot in the group stage.

The series started off on Ancient, a map in which MOUZ had a 100% win rate up to this point, but the European mixture started off on the less favored T side and struggled to find inroads to break HEROIC's defense. They scraped just one round in the first half while planting the bomb just three times in the entire first interval.

MOUZ won the pistol round once the sides switched and attempted to claw back the disadvantage with several of their rounds coming with the help of a smoke defuse. The scoreline read 14-5 when Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund and René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen combined for all five kills on the A site to get their team to match point, which they converted on in their first attempt.

Next up was Inferno, where the Danes won the first pistol round and appeared to start another dominating display before a quad kill by Ádám "⁠torzsi⁠" Torzsás got his team on the board and turned the tide of the map. MOUZ took a 3-2 lead for the first time in the series, which they kept throughout the first half as the Hungarian AWPer continued to provide highlights.

The scoreline read 12-3 at the interval, which meant the pistol round win was a must for the Danes. They weren't able to win it, but won the forcebuy in the next round, meaning they started their comeback attempt from 3-13. HEROIC then got seven rounds in a row, bringing the scoreline to 10-13 before MOUZ secured their second T round on Inferno and their third in the series overall, which gave their individuals the confidence to close out the map 16-11 and move the series on to Nuke.

The decider started with a pistol round win for MOUZ, which they converted to a 3-0 start before HEROIC won the first gun round and started to once again dominate on the CT side, winning ten out of the remaining 12 rounds of the half to set the scoreline at 10-5.

HEROIC then won yet another pistol round and found themselves 13-5 up following a successful conversion in the following. A 1v2 clutch by Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund was the final nail in the MOUZ coffin, as the European combine fell to the lower bracket in a 7-16 loss.