G2 brush off early tremors to lock in last BLAST Bounty S1 Finals spot

The team recovered from a shaky debut with HeavyGod against B8 in a 2-1 win over BIG to reach the LAN final.

G2 have secured the final spot at BLAST Bounty Season 1 Finals after a reverse-sweep victory over BIG, giving a more convincing account of themselves after a labored debut with Nikita "⁠HeavyGod⁠" Martynenko saw the team barely scrape past B8.

The Israeli rifler looked comfortable in his anchor roles and was particularly potent on the Dust2 decider, preventing a loss to pistols with a 1v3 clutch and amassing a 22-5 K-D (2.01 rating) to help convert the series.

The gap left by Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač's departure is a big one to fill, both in voice and in impact, with Janusz "⁠Snax⁠" Pogorzelski touching on how it contributed to some of the early shakiness against B8 and on map one against BIG in a post-match interview.

"It's obviously different, we had NiKo before and now we have Niki [HeavyGod]," the Polish captain began. "I'm taking care of T side, on CT side we're all trying to do our best, TaZ, Nema [huNter-], all of us are trying the [basic] things, to communicate well, the strats, whatever.

"It's a little bit of a new story, new journey for the team, obviously not having NiKo as a player in the team is something... hard, I don't know how to explain it perfectly. You need to fill the gaps that his exit from the team made, but we're slowly getting there. It's not the easiest part, but we're on a good [path].

"Like today and [on Friday] we had problems, especially at the start, and I'm sucking on Ancient, I cannot kill anyone as CT, I don't know what I'm doing there, but it is what it is."

Snax also expanded on calling without NiKo as a second voice and if someone else has stepped up to fill the gap.

"It wasn't always like this with NiKo," Snax said. "From what I can tell, I just have more space to talk," he said. "I was never trying to block NiKo when he had his calls, I was always flowing with them, trying to change to go with them, and the guys if they see an opening they are still saying it.

"It depends on the match, like some of the matches I am calling everything from A-Z, like this Dust2 was more on me, and then some other maps people are saying, 'I want to do this,' and I try to play around it. Maybe not [against B8] on Ancient when Mario was going out Mid alone and I didn't even know it."

BIG were imperious on the T side of their pick despite losing the opening kill in seven rounds, making up for the difference thanks to multi-fragging from Ancient specialist Jon "⁠JDC⁠" de Castro, strong positional play by Can "⁠kyuubii⁠" Ali, and exceptional mid-round calls and executes that left G2's defense destitute for an 11-1 half.

There was little confidence in a recovery on G2's T side after they played below expectations and fumbled a lead on the same map against B8 on Friday, but they took a step towards answering that criticism with a seven-round cosmetic comeback on Ancient and a 7-5 lead on their pick of Mirage.

Ilya "⁠m0NESY⁠" Osipov, after a subdued showing on Ancient, continued to struggle on map two with a handful of crucial missed shots. That let BIG keep the scoreline close, but Mario "⁠malbsMd⁠" Samayoa continued to shine and HeavyGod flourished as an A anchor, stepping up with a crucial triple kill to stop the game from spiraling out of control.

The 22-year-old newcomer combined with m0NESY to shut BIG down on Dust2, another 7-5 lead at the half giving way to a far simpler 13-6 victory thanks to malbsMd entries and HeavyGod's closers on the T side.