BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 Challengers Stage

The biggest stories and plays from day two of the BLAST.tv Paris Major

9-5-2023 23:19

Catch up on the biggest stories, HLTV.org's player of the day, and highlight moments from the second day of the BLAST.tv Paris Major.

ENCE and G2 blast through to the Legends Stage

G2 became the first team to advance from the Challengers Stage undefeated. They had looked somewhat shaky in their CT side starts on Inferno against The MongolZ and Complexity on the opening day, but have otherwise looked convincing thanks to their mighty Terrorist sides. They went on to add two more superb T sides to their tally in their third-round win over Apeks, on Anubis and another Inferno, sporting a ridiculous 83.7% win rate on the offense across four maps.

ENCE's run was all the more impressive due to the fact that they had a much tougher draw to start, facing off against OG and Ninjas in Pyjamas in the first two rounds before they rounded out their Challengers Stage campaign with a series victory over FaZe. Typically the team relies on their star combination to dish out the numbers, but this time it was a team performance that got them over the line, with Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković in the spotlight at the top of the charts.

G2's superb T sides propelled them to the Legends Stage

ENCE beat three BLAST partners on the way to the Legends Stage — a fact Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer, who has been a long-standing critic of the tournament organizer's franchise structure, couldn't help but to point out. "I hope they reconsider their format in 2024 and open it up so it's not like a franchised league. It will benefit the whole circuit, I think it will benefit their tournament and viewers," he said an interview with HLTV after advancing in the tournament.

FaZe faltered in the series despite a lights-out display from Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool. The Estonian put up a staggering 1.50 rating across three maps, but even that wasn't enough to make up for the team's lacking CT side play on Nuke and Anubis. Their decision to end the series on the newest map in the pool instead of Ancient also came under fire, as Anubis has been by far FaZe's least played and least successful map of the year.

MOUZ flop to go out 0-3, Liquid barely stave off elimination

Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong's team was dealt difficult matchups in the opening two rounds in Ninjas in Pyjamas and OG, but then faced off against a favorable and struggling GamerLegion in the 0-2 pool, only to flop in another convincing affair and go out of the tournament without winning a single map. MOUZ have now added a second consecutive joint-last-place exit after also bombing out of IEM Rio just a few weeks ago.

David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský's unwavering consistency was the only positive to take away from an embarrassment of a run in Paris. MOUZ had two out of the four lowest-rated players of the tournament and a third not too far above, won only 37% of their rounds — less than even Fluxo, whom many considered the worst team at the Major by some distance —, and ranked the lowest at the event in nearly every other metric, too.

siuhy hugged his former MOUZ NXT teammates after eliminating them from the Major

The second team to be eliminated with a 0-3 record were Fluxo. The Brazilians had widely been predicted to go winless in the tournament, but proved resilient at their dying breath when they faced off against Liquid in what turned out to be a hotly-contested series. The North American team had to come back from an opening Nuke loss to win 16-14 on Inferno and 16-13 on Ancient, breathing a sigh of relief as they hope to continue their recovery from a 0-2 start in their next matchup against Complexity.

In the other 1-2 matches on Wednesday, GamerLegion will face off against OG and The MongolZ against Monte. Six teams will play for three more Legends Stage spots later in the day: FaZe vs. FORZE, Grayhound vs. Ninjas in Pyjamas, and Apeks vs. paiN.

Live updates from BLAST.tv Paris Major day two

Standings after day two

Group Challengers Stage

3W - 0L

ENCE

2W - 1L

paiN

FORZE

1W - 2L

0W - 3L

Player of the day

ropz has been FaZe's highest-rated player in recent times and continues to deliver the goods individually with a 1.39 rating across five maps played so far in Paris.

Despite FaZe's loss to ENCE in the Legends Stage-qualifying match, ropz stood head and shoulders above everyone else on the server and earns the player of the day nod for the superb series performance.

Below are his most notable stats from the series:

Score: 80-50
Rating: 1.50
ADR: 103.7

Opening duels: 13-7
Multikills: 23
Impact: 1.67