ENCE complete fairytale run to win Elisa Masters Espoo over HEROIC

A renaissance gla1ve showing pushed his young debutants to glory on their organization's home soil.

ENCE are Elisa Masters Espoo 2024 champions on home soil after completing their fairytale run with a 3-1 victory over HEROIC in the final.

Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander's squad were debuting their new-look youthful roster around Ryan "⁠Neityu⁠" Aubry (19) and Kacper "⁠xKacpersky⁠" Gabara (17) in Espoo and entered as the second-lowest seed with five days of practice.

Just three days later, they hoisted the trophy and have beaten 9z, The MongolZ, and HEROIC, all established top 30 sides, to do so.

Completing the run past Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz and Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha's HEROIC, the duo that left ENCE at the start of 2024, only made the victory more sweet.

gla1ve himself was key as ENCE's young side felt the nerves on map three, Vertigo, only for their captain to roll back the years in a 39-frag performance in the triple overtime win before smashing 23 frags in 21 rounds on map four to clinch ENCE the trophy.

"It's pretty crazy to think about the road I've been through," gla1ve told the broadcast after lifting the trophy. "Getting benched by Astralis was a pretty rough time. Then, coming to ENCE, not getting the results that we wanted and that the organization wanted as well…

"Now standing here, lifting the trophy in Finland, in front of the Finnish crowd, being from ENCE, a Finnish organization, it just feels really good."

It was impressive enough that ENCE were in the position to feel the nerves: HEROIC came in as heavy favorites after a top-four finish at IEM Rio and won map one comprehensively. The Finnish crowd would have been forgiven for thinking the fairytale was over.

But ENCE rallied for successive 10-2 first halves on Nuke and Vertigo, and 9-3 on map four of Dust2, all of which they — eventually — converted.

ENCE did find it tricky to close: There were warning signs as 10-2 turned into 13-7 on Nuke, but disaster struck on Vertigo as 10-2 turned into 11-12. The youngsters were down and out but gla1ve's multi-kills — he ended the map on 13 — kept arriving and that gave a chance for star rifler Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev to explode into action with a show-stopping and game-turning ace.

All three young guns showed good signs, though, with xKacpersky's aggression on Ancient, Neityu top-fragging on Nuke, and the otherwise quiet Paavo "⁠podi⁠" Heiskanen still having impact like this quad-kill.

Star-studded names on the other side, meanwhile, struggled. Rasmus "⁠sjuush⁠" Beck was relentlessly targeted in a miserable Vertigo showing on the B bomb-site, René "⁠TeSeS⁠" Madsen had 25 kills on the T side of Vertigo but little impact elsewhere, and Abdul "⁠degster⁠" Gasanov's whiffs on Dust2 was costly as nobody was unable to halt the team's first-half collapses against the world No. 69.

Dust2 was the fourth map and gla1ve continued his 2018-esque form to push his grand final kill count to a whopping 82, with a server-topping 1.29 rating, to win his first trophy since December 2020.

The only bad news for ENCE is that momentum will be tough to build on, given their failure to qualify for the RMR with their old lineup.

Tonight, however, all the struggles ENCE have endured since losing their 2023 Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer-led lineup can be forgotten. Their new era is off to a flyer.