Best Five of BLAST Spring Final 2023

Heroic dominate the team of the event after grabbing their first Big Event trophy of the year.

The last event of the season, in the words of Dan "⁠apEX⁠" Madesclaire, is "never the best" in terms of quality, but the BLAST Spring Final delivered heaps of entertainment as teams fought to go into the summer tournament break on a high. We had Imperial's shock run to the arena, G2's return to form, and a rematch of the HEROIC - Vitality final from IEM Rio.

In all the chaos, we also had one of the most tightly contested MVP races of the season. Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard emerged victorious in the end, but with Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller, Mathieu "⁠ZywOo⁠" Herbaut, and Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund all nipping at his heels. BLAST events, with a pretty low sample size, are always difficult to hand out awards at and it is no different for this Best Five.

Still, we've managed to cobble together a lineup of the best performing players in each of our designated roles: Anchor for supportive CT Side players, Opener for pack riflers on T side, Closer for lurkers on T side, and then an IGL and AWPer to round it out.

Anchor: VINI

With star anchors Sergey "⁠Ax1Le⁠" Rykhtorov and Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool eliminated in groups, there was scope for a fresh face in the Anchor category. René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen and Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck were key cogs of the HEROIC machine as always, while Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif had some hugely impactful maps, but at the end of the day none of those names could match the impact of Vinicius "⁠VINI⁠" Figueiredo.

VINI's highs and lows largely coincided with Imperial's, so it is no surprise that he had the highest kills in won rounds (0.97) in the team. Highlights included top-fragging with a 1.74 rating on Inferno against HEROIC in semis and a just as crucial 1.33 rating in a 16-14 win over Vitality on Vertigo in groups.

VINI qualifies for this award by anchoring spots like A on Mirage, A on Ancient, Floor on Nuke, and Monster on Overpass, but his impact was often felt more on T-side than from those anchor spots, sporting a 1.11 T Rating and 1.03 on CT.

AWPer & IGL: cadiaN

In classic HEROIC fashion, cadiaN's men won their games by committee — players took over maps, but rarely did so for entire series. It is why in HEROIC's last five grand final appearances, even their win at BLAST Premier Fall Final 2022, they have failed to grab a single MVP.

Without that true superstar, a lot of pressure is put onto cadiaN's shoulders; it is his system, and his calling, which must be relied upon rather than any one individual. And so, delivering a 1.20 rating whilst leading HEROIC to such a high level as a team is something that deserves plenty of credit. Their CT sides were as dynamic as ever and HEROIC also mustered the second highest T RW% of the event.

cadiaN's individual stats were slightly inflated by a 23% save rate in HEROIC's lost rounds, but he still put up a 1.21 Impact rating and 0.12 opening kills per round — he wasn't playing scared. It was a performance second only to jabbi at the event.

Closer: jabbi

MVP jabbi claims the lurker spot in our Best Five, holding a team-topping T-side rating of 1.19 and putting up a massive 1.06 kills per round win. It was a return to star form that we have not seen since he dominated IEM Katowice (before the final, at least) in February. It was a welcome return, too, since HEROIC always seem more threatening when jabbi is matching stavn for output.

Nominally HEROIC's lurker, jabbi is still tasked with aggression, sometimes returning to a entry fragging style akin to how he played in Copenhagen Flames, something that helped him accrue 0.14 opening kills per round this event.

In combination with all of those kills in won rounds it shows that jabbi is not a lurker who statpads. His kills are providing real impact and him standing tall in the grand final was one of the key differentials that turned the tide HEROIC's way.

Read more

jabbi named MVP of BLAST Premier Spring Final

Opener: NiKo

Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač, despite two quiet performances on Inferno, ended the BLAST Spring Final with some crazy statlines. A figure of 0.82 KPR is exceedingly difficult to hit as an aggressive rifler, as is a KAST of 77% — he was rarely throwing his life away without getting something for it.

0.17 opening kills per round (1st) is also worthy of attention, coming at an attempt rate of 29.3%, the third-highest of the event behind Christian "⁠Buzz⁠" Andersen and Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen, hardly star players.

It is this that makes NiKo such a special player when he is on song: He is taking so many more risks to be able to match the output of star AWPers. This does come with inconsistency at times, but these risks always have layers of logic behind them — even if he is losing his duels.

G2 ultimately fell short here, but this event was a great sign that NiKo is not letting their failure at the last CS:GO Major affect them long-term. This is still a team that can compete for trophies despite all of the attention that is placed upon them event after event.

Fill: stavn

With cadiaN as the AWP & IGL, who better than stavn to act as the IGL's stand-in to complete our Best Five? cadiaN's lieutenant and support caller had a solid event of his own, putting himself into the MVP conversation with a great group stage and performing well in all of HEROIC's map wins at the event.

There are still a question mark over his big game play and whether he can be the superstar that HEROIC sometimes look like they need, but at this event we saw what happened when the pieces around him stood up. When stavn, cadiaN, and jabbi all end the event with similar ratings we can see what HEROIC is truly designed for.

cadiaN earns a lot of the praise for HEROIC's system and some of that praise should be heading stavn's way, too; having a great secondary caller is invaluable at the highest level. He has also now recorded five Big Events in a row above a 1.16 rating, putting himself very much in the conversation for one of the best riflers in the world. He fell behind NiKo for overall impact in the opener category, but he was a certainty for the Best Five once the 'Fill' role opened up.

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Best Five

No Vitality players make it in the end, ZywOo losing out to cadiaN and none of the other players matching the consistency of those chosen in their roles. VINI benefits from a fairly weak Anchor cohort at this event, while cadiaN's status as AWP and IGL leaves a spot for stavn to sneak in at the end.

As an actual team it's not come out quite as clean this time around as it has in the past, but it is still workable. We have the HEROIC trio, meaning that essentially NiKo is replacing TeSeS and VINI is in for sjuush. jabbi and stavn will have to sacrifice some CT spots for NiKo, but if there's anyone you'd swap a spot for it would probably be him.