Heroic defeat Astralis in IEM Katowice opener

Eternal Fire demolished BetBoom in the B stream match.

HEROIC and Eternal Fire were the first teams to earn an upper-bracket berth through the opening round of the IEM Katowice Play-In, doing so at the expense of Astralis and BetBoom, respectively.

The HEROIC and Astralis matchup was the highlight of the round for many, considering the history between the two teams and organizations. Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck and René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen got the better of their former teammates this time around, with the former even topping the scoreboard with a 1.20 rating.

HEROIC and Eternal Fire will move to their respective upper-bracket finals to fight for a spot in the group stage, while Astralis and BetBoom are relegated to the lower bracket and require two straight victories to keep their Katowice hopes alive.

Date	Matches
IEM Katowice 2024 Play-in
31/01/2024	HEROIC 20:10 BIG	Match
31/01/2024	Eternal Fire 20:15 Rebels	Match
01/02/2024	BetBoom 16:30 Cloud9	Match
01/02/2024	Astralis 20:40 ENCE	Match

The grudge match between Astralis and HEROIC got the action underway on the A stream, in their first battle since Astralis' controversial signings of Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund and Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard. Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz and company got off to a slow start and found themselves 0-4 down, but they rallied and dominated the gun rounds to bring the half back in their favor, 7-5.

HEROIC converted the second pistol, too, which equalized the scores at 7-7. This time, HEROIC showed some steel when we switched to full-buys too and quickly reached match point.

Astralis needed to call a full five-man A execute from spawn to start a comeback, but fell short in the final round of regulation to drop the map 11-13.

The B stream began with BetBoom versus Eternal Fire, one of the tougher games to call in the opening round on paper.

The expectations didn't manifest in reality, though, as utter domination from start to finish earned Eternal Fire a dominant 13-1 win. A failed pistol round from BetBoom with missed utility summed the action up.