Astralis & C9 breeze past underdogs in Bucharest

Nexus and PERA fall to the 0-1 pool at the Europe RMR after getting swept by the favorites.

Astralis and Cloud9 picked up comfortable wins in the opening round of the second European qualifier for the PGL Major, breezing past heavy underdogs Nexus and PERA, respectively, to advance to the 1-0 pool.

Both winning teams now know their opponents in the second round, which will be played later today: Astralis are set to face off against the red-hot Spirit powered by Danil "⁠donk⁠" Kryshkovets, while Cloud9 will go up against Apeks.

The Danes had a favorable first test in Bucharest in the form of the lowest-ranked team in attendance, and they passed it without any real issues. They went up 9-0 in the Ancient affair before Nexus managed a response off the back of entries from Alexandru "⁠s0und⁠" Ștefan.

Two rounds towards the end of the half and the following pistol were all the Romanians could muster against Astralis, who had Victor "⁠Staehr⁠" Staehr find some entries of his own to barrel through the defense in the first chance they got with weapons in hand and closed the match with ease.

It was a similar story between Cloud9 and PERA, the second-lowest ranked team in attendance who also got into the RMR by the skin of their teeth, through the closed qualifier's last-chance bracket.

The Hungarian-majority side could not convert the few opportunities Brajan "⁠DGL⁠" Lemecha gave them on the Anubis defense, and it all came crashing down when Kirill "⁠Boombl4⁠" Mikhailov won the second pistol round 1v1 clutch with a knife kill.