GL take revenge on paiN to qualify for IEM Katowice Stage 2

GamerLegion got a resounding 2-0 against a team that failed to adjust and ran into a wall.

If HEROIC proved to Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz and the rest of Liquid that their online victory at BLAST Bounty was no fluke with a victory in the opening day of IEM Katowice Stage 1, GamerLegion denied paiN the same pleasure and instead humbled them 2-0 to secure a Stage 2 berth in Katowice.

The three-mapper at BLAST Bounty, where paiN showed they were in a good period of form to kick off the new year, was a close one, ending in the last round of the decider map, but this time around GamerLegion were in control throughout.

Erik "⁠ztr⁠" Gustafsson's reads and abuse on Inferno and paiN's inability to get past GamerLegion's A defenses deep in Ramp were the Brazilian team's Achilles' heel as they only mustered eight rounds in total across both maps.

REZ's experience is meshing well with the team's youthful excitement

Three of GamerLegion's players have never played an IEM Katowice before — one of them, 17-year-old Oldřich "⁠PR⁠" Nový, has never even played an international LAN —, and now not only have they played in Stage 1, but they'll get to be among the top sixteen teams in Poland in Stage 2.

Fruit of Ashley "⁠ash⁠" Battye's teambuilding, the dynamics in GamerLegion seem to be bearing fruit early on with the addition of some experience from Fredrik "⁠REZ⁠" Sterner alongside the youngsters.

"I feel like I can teach them a lot of things and I can learn from them as well, they bring this really motivated atmosphere in the game and they are very hungry," REZ said in an interview with HLTV after beating SAW in the opening round in Katowice. "They make me feel young, you know? It's a nice atmosphere to be around."

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"We went in with a kind of blank approach, just do whatever we want, kind of, like feeling plays, so I called a lot on the CT side [of Mirage] and it worked out really well." REZ said in his post-match interview on the broadcast after beating paiN, further cementing how his new role as a secondary captain is helping GamerLegion.

The team's captain, ztr, also spoke about the relationship with his former teammate after the match. "I feel like he hasn't changed that much," ztr said about reuniting with REZ in the post-match segment on the desk. "For him, it's probably me who changed a lot more. I joined him as a Young Ninjas player, so probably he enjoys playing more with me now than he did back then, to say the least."

paiN's crutches were not adapting to patterns

The most painful takeaway from today's match for paiN will be how GamerLegion was able to reveal the glaring cracks in the armor. The Brazilians could not adapt on the CT side of Inferno, where ztr and his men abused Banana and the B bomb site, exposing an inability of the Brazilians to adapt on the fly to stop the bleeding.

After a back-and-forth in the first four rounds of the game, paiN only scored one more defense and then GamerLegion locked it down, winning eight rounds in a row, four on either side of the half.

Joshua "⁠steel⁠" Nissan added in the post-match segment that paiN ran into similar problems on the A site of Mirage, this time on the attack, when the duo attacking A and the duo taking Mid and trying to explode through Connector were stopped by the CTs taking advantageous positions on Ramp and nullifying the split pushes.

Once again, GamerLegion's moves were met with an inability by paiN tweak and as they were locked out of the A site on Mirage despite starting 4-0 to ultimately lose it 5-13.