G2 brush aside NIP to secure BLAST Fall Final spot

The EWC runners-up barely had to break a sweat to come out on top of the series.

G2 have locked up a spot at the BLAST Premier Fall Final thanks to a comfortable 2-0 victory over Ninjas in Pyjamas. Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski's troops join Spirit and Vitality in qualifying for the event in Copenhagen, which is slated to start on September 25.

It was a one-sided victory for G2, who outperformed their opponents in every department. Still, their display was not without fault, with Snax admitting after the series that his team was not fully focused. "But even with the kind of mistakes we made, it was pretty okay," he said. "I didn't feel the pressure."

Ninjas in Pyjamas will now be thrown into another qualifying match against Astralis on Sunday. The team's fans will be hoping for an improved performance from star player Artem "⁠r1nkle⁠" Moroz, who had a quieter afternoon than his impressive debut against FaZe.

Shortly before the match, Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov had said that the Ukrainian's tendency to be hyper-aggressive was sometimes his undoing. "He's playing really well. He's a really aggressive AWPer. I think sometimes he's overdoing it, and you can easily punish a mistake." The Ukrainian had the most AWP kills on both maps (10 on Ancient and seven on Inferno), but his presence was barely felt, apart from a few good rounds.

Date	Matches
BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024
04/08/2024	Astralis 14:35 Ninjas in Pyjamas	Match

The series kicked off on Ancient, where G2 raced out to an 8-4 lead with a dominant CT display by m0NESY, who racked up 16 frags in the half.

r1nkle had been a joy to watch against FaZe on this map the day before, but he lacked the same impact in the game, with Max "⁠maxster⁠" Jansson stealing the show on the T side with a couple of multi-kill rounds.

Ninjas in Pyjamas were helpless to prevent G2 from reaching map point early in the second half. They still managed to put together a string of rounds, but their comeback hopes were dashed as G2 locked down the map on a shoddy buy.

Clip: r1nkle with two no-scope kills in a row:

G2 maintained their momentum on Inferno and stormed out to a 6-2 lead on the T side, only to lose their focus and let Ninjas in Pyjamas post four unanswered rounds. A comeback would not come to fruition, however, as the Ninjas struggled immensely on the offense and grabbed only two rounds in the second half.