Liquid take down Outsiders in BLAST World Final opener

Outsiders' Anubis pick backfired in the first tier-one encounter on the new map at the BLAST Premier World Final.

Liquid kickstarted their BLAST Premier World Final campaign with a 2-1 group stage victory over Outsiders. Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella's men found themselves a map down after dropping their pick Inferno 10-16, but scored 16-8 wins on both Anubis and the decider, Mirage, to seal the match in their favor.

Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic and Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski were their team's heaviest hitters, finishing with 53 and 56 kills alongside 1.28 and 1.22 ratings, respectively. Liquid progress to the Group A upper final while Outsiders fall to the lower final where they await the loser of their group's second opener between FaZe and G2.

Outsiders completely blew Liquid's offense to shreds on the CT side and finished the first half with a whopping 13-2 lead. The North Americans struggled immensely to break into either bomb site, with their two points on the board coming from a quick plant in the second and a NAF 1vs1 clutch right before halftime. Liquid breathed new life into the game coming out of the break, winning five of the first six rounds behind Josh "⁠oSee⁠" Ohm and EliGE's nine and seven kills, respectively.

Outsiders clinched map point in the 22nd after a swift A push, but the NA squad kept fighting and chipped away at their opponents' advantage each round. Back-to-back quad-kills for nitr0 and Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis kept Liquid's run alive, but the comeback would fall short in the end as Aleksei "⁠Qikert⁠" Golubev and David "⁠n0rb3r7⁠" Danielyan delivered the final blows to wrap up Inferno 16-10.

The tables completely turned on Anubis as it was Liquid who streaked to a 6-0 lead before Outsiders finally stopped the run in the seventh, capitalizing on a 5vs4 advantage due to NAF's technical issues. Both teams traded scores following a lengthy technical break as Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali's crew entered the switch down by three after winning five of the last six rounds. Even with Outsiders' late run, Liquid were comfortably ahead on the fragging department as EliGE, oSee and NAF put up 15, 12, and 11 kills respectively in the first period alone.

Any momentum Outsiders gained late in the first half was completely shut down by Liquid's offense as the North Americans plowed their way to a dominant 16-8 victory on Anubis. nitr0's men found a great deal of success with B hits and mid control which proved to be too much for Outsiders to handle in the end. Liquid took home the 16-8 win after a near-flawless T side to send the series to a decider on Mirage.

Outsiders kicked off Mirage with the upper hand early on and garnered a 4-1 lead sparked by a quick triple-kill by Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev in round two. Their advantage would be short-lived, though, as Liquid bagged nine out of the last ten to close out the first half with a 10-5 score. Outsiders kept things competitive at the beginning of the second, but their efforts merely delayed the inevitable as Liquid won three in-a-row to close out the map 16-8 and series 2-1.