m0NESY leads the charge for G2 in 2-1 victory over Heroic

G2 won their first Nuke with this lineup to continue their upper bracket run in the IEM Katowice group stage.

G2 came into IEM Katowice with plenty of maps under their belt from the BLAST Premier Spring Groups, where they logged four best-of-three series against Ninjas in Pyjamas and Natus Vincere, two each, and one against Liquid.

The IEM Katowice Group B opener added three more maps to the bucket, the two first ones being particularly long and arduous, but in the end Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen and company came out on top in large part due to star AWPer Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov carrying the team on his back.

"I’m happy with BLAST, we lost to NAVI which stings, but I prefer losing in the group stage and still qualifying for the Finals than just losing two games and going out," G2’s coach Wiktor "⁠TaZ⁠" Wojtas said in a pre-match interview on the broadcast.

"We managed to play 11 maps, for the start of the season after the break and having a bootcamp before going to BLAST, it was really good. I feel like we had a double bootcamp before coming to this event. I’m looking forward [to seeing] how much of the stuff we were talking about we will actually fix."

They didn’t seem unshakeable against HEROIC, however, a feisty underdog team who are showing plenty of potential in Poland after beating Astralis and BIG in the tournament’s play-in stage after a last-place finish at BLAST Groups.

The first map of the series was decided by individual performances, particularly the spectacular 39-12, 2.07-rated showing by m0NESY. The Russian AWPer was key in a map which G2 ground back from a 7-10 deficit after losing to a forcebuy all the way to overtime and eventually a 16-13 victory.

Anubis was also a game of margins, where clutch situations and late-round actions decided the way the map swung. A 2vs2 situation cleared by m0NESY for G2 to get within two, 5-7, at the half, or a 2vs4 by him and Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač in the second half to tie things up, 9-9, kept the game’s intensity high. In the end, it was another overtime, but after losing the first round HEROIC buckled up and won two defenses and two attacks to close it out 16-13.

G2 were yet to win Nuke with this lineup as they went into the match’s decider map with an 0-4 record on it, but a 6-6 tie at the half was a great scoreline for the red-hot m0NESY to destroy HEROIC with 14 kills and 179 ADR in 7 rounds as he and his teammates cruised to a clean 13-6 victory.

Date	Matches
IEM Katowice 2024
03/02/2024	Vitality 20:50 ENCE	Match
05/02/2024	HEROIC 13:30 Vitality	Match
05/02/2024	G2 17:30 ENCE	Match

G2 and HEROIC, now in different brackets, will play the winner and loser of the series between Vitality and ENCE, respectively. HEROIC have shown they have a bite, taking G2 to two overtimes, while TaZ's men showed they have staying power with a fearsome m0NESY as the tip of the spear.