FaZe's stars shine to banish NIP to lower bracket in Cologne

Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and Helvijs "⁠broky⁠" Saukants put in a carry performance each to help FaZe to victory.

FaZe have sent Ninjas in Pyjamas to the lower bracket of their group at IEM Cologne by virtue of a 2-1 victory, losing Mirage (14-16) before convincingly winning Overpass (16-5) and Nuke (16-7).

The result means FaZe will progress to an upper bracket bout with G2, whilst Ninjas in Pyjamas head to face Astralis in the lower bracket. Both of those games will go down on Monday at 16:00

Date	Matches
IEM Cologne 2023
31/07/2023	Astralis 12:30 Ninjas in Pyjamas	Match
31/07/2023	G2 16:00 FaZe	Match

It was a fairly straightforward victory for FaZe after what was a closely contested Mirage. Both teams relied on their defensive halves heavily on the map, with FaZe getting a lot of their work done by virtue of a secondary AWP on ropz. Ninjas in Pyjamas simply had a little bit more to offer on their own defensive effort, their proactive approach proving too much for FaZe to solve.

Overpass was the ropz show, with the Estonian producing a monstrous 1.98-rated performance to ensure FaZe sailed smoothly through the map. In recent times Ninjas in Pyjamas have struggled badly on Overpass, and that continued today, making their win rate over the last three months a dismal 14.3%.

A similar story occurred on Nuke, with one FaZe player providing a superlative performance, but this time it was the AWPer broky. The Latvian laser was imperious on defense, providing 20 kills and 127.5 ADR as FaZe racked up an 11-round CT half. Some special moments from Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke, Daniil "⁠headtr1ck⁠" Valitov and Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner earned Ninjas in Pyjamas a few rounds, but it was not enough to deny FaZe.