Cloud9 snatch victory from OG to make Brazy Party title decider

Vladislav "⁠nafany⁠" Gorshkov's men brought things back from the brink of defeat on the Ancient decider to make the grand final.

Cloud9 have made it past OG in the semi-final of Brazy Party to set up a title-deciding match against Astralis on Wednesday at 20:00 . The Danish and Russian teams missed out on making the BLAST.tv Paris Major and aren't scheduled for another event until IEM Dallas, and thus their meeting in the grand final is both poetic and incredibly important as it will be their only chance to gain ranking points until after the Major.

The semi-final series featured a pair of disastrously squandered rounds and ended up spanning over four hours thanks in part to a lengthy pause on map one, with Timofey "⁠interz⁠" Yakushin stepping in for Cloud9 on Overpass before they returned to full strength for the Ancient decider.

OG mustered an early lead on their Inferno pick, going up 6-3, before Cloud9 found their footing to bring the scoreline back to almost even-keel. Shortly into the second half, however, a lengthy pause ensued. nafany was experiencing difficulty playing due to a splinter, while Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov had an eye problem.

The former issue was resolved and play got underway again, with Cloud9 letting slip 12-10 and 15-14 leads as OG pushed the map to overtime. The teams traded blows in the extra set of rounds for a tie game at 17-17, only for nafany to miss a spray on Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov in a 1vs1 situation to give OG match point, which they converted into a 19-17 victory.

The tilting manner in which the end of Inferno went down was made worse when HObbit had to step back from the server on Cloud9's pick of Overpass due to his aforementioned eye issue, with interz joining the server to fill in for his former squad.

Cloud9 weren't fazed, however, and battled back on their map pick with a solid showing on the T-side (9-6). OG made an effort to stabilize and evened the score at the start of the second half, but couldn't maintain momentum as Cloud9 took the map 16-11 to force an Ancient decider.

HObbit returned to the server for the final map of the series, but it didn't start with Cloud9 on good footing: OG won six rounds in a row on the CT side, with Dmitry "⁠sh1ro⁠" Sokolov notably struggling to have any impact early on. Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov stepped up to make up the difference, securing a handful of multi-kill rounds and finding key impact with his lurks in A main to help his team get back into the game.

Cloud9 put together eight straight rounds to take the lead at halftime off the back of their star rifler's performance, but began to struggle again in the second half as OG cracked open bombsites repeatedly to gain the lead. The European combine stormed ahead to a 15-12 scoreline before Cloud9 put together two more rounds, but even that didn't seem to be enough as OG gained the advantage in round 30.

What looked to be a clear-cut victory for OG from a 5vs3 post-plant situation gave way to a 2vs1 from Adam "⁠NEOFRAG⁠" Zouhar and degster, but confusion ensued when neither player swung out on HObbit as he stuck a defuse out in the open to push his team through to overtime.

There, Cloud9 were in firm control, the manner in which they stole the last round of regulation clearly putting the wind in their sails. Ax1Le continued to shine as he helped his team close things out, 19-16, extending Cloud9's undefeated streak over OG to 3-0 in matches and 6-1 in maps overall.