Astralis brawl past VP for Barys Arena berth

HooXi has called his way to playoffs as Astralis' stand-in captain.

Astralis have beaten Virtus.pro to secure a playoff spot on their debut with Rasmus "⁠HooXi⁠" Nielsen, breaking the core's losing streak of three series and six maps against the Bears.

The Danes are still reeling from missing their fifth consecutive Major, and subsequent reports of financial trouble, but the players have done well to put that out of their minds for a 3-1 run in Astana's group stage.

HooXi arrived as a stand-in for the tournament and— if the team is able to stick together — has made a case for that to become permanent with some good calling and far better fragging than he ever showed on G2. On map one, HooXi was even top of the board for Astralis with 28 kills.

Clip: HooXi's 4k turns map one Astralis' way

"I feel like there's no pressure," said HooXi on the desk post-game. "The results before were not great, so coming in with 9 days of practice and having another bad result would be what people expected."

That has contributed to a positive atmosphere in the team, with HooXi saying that they "definitely have a good time. They're the biggest trolls I have met. Our prac room is always crazy."

Clip: FL1T and fame deliver a 2v5 that fired VP to a (wasted) 8-4 half

The series was scrappy throughout, with the first four pistol rounds all going unconverted, and it came down to an Ancient decider where force-buy wars raged for the first seven rounds.

Virtus.pro came out victors of those brawls, leading 7-5 at the half, but HooXi's calling once again made the difference as Astralis took the half 8-2 and map 13-9. It helped that he didn't need to repeat his Dust2 heroics, too, with all four of the team's nominated fraggers crossing 1.20 ratings on Ancient to take Astralis to the arena.

HooXi calls and frags Astralis out of their Dust2 dumpster

Astralis have been shocking on Dust2 in 2025, sporting a 1-7 record. It looked like more of the same, too, as Virtus.pro charged to a 8-4 lead as they looked to win a seventh map in a row against this Astralis core.

But thanks to HooXi, that has changed. The team's (temporary) new captain called the team to a 8-4 T side comeback to secure overtime and accelerated in extra time to win 19-15.

Even more surprisingly, HooXi paired calling with fragging. The Gigachad ended map one with a whopping 28 kills, +5.22% round swing, and 1.31 rating.

Dustin "⁠dusT⁠" Mouret delivered a statistic that says it all: HooXi has won as many Dust2 matches with Astralis in four days (2-1) as Casper "⁠cadiaN⁠" Møller managed in the rest of 2025 (2-8).

Ancient also spoke to HooXi's impact, as Astralis pivoted away from the Mid-heavy defaults that saw them lose 13-2 to ODDIK and put Martin "⁠stavn⁠" Lund back towards Cave for a far more efficient T side.

VP go into 2-2 game suffering from familiar problems

The story of Astralis' good second halves is also one of Virtus.pro fumbling advantages on Dust2 and Ancient with a 1.38-rated Evgenii "⁠FL1T⁠" Lebedev wondering what happened.

The team's turgid, slow, playstyle was at its worst at times on Dust2. In one damning example, the team was so slow to retake that HooXi won a 1v3 just by hiding on the A site.

New recruits Kaisar "⁠ICY⁠" Faiznurov and Timur "⁠FL4MUS⁠" Marev are also struggling, with in-game leader Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov failing to get the best out of them. Even more concerning is electroNic's own form, as he finishes the series with a -25 K-D and 0.74 rating.