Nemiga beat HEROIC to secure Stage 3 berth in Major debut

The rookie team continues to surprise with its biggest scalp yet, ending HEROIC's last dance with sAw and SunPayus early.

Nemiga have secured a berth in Stage 3 of the BLAST.tv Austin Major following a 2-0 win over HEROIC, in which they pulled off an impressive comeback on Mirage to break their opponents' spirits.

It's the biggest scalp yet for Nemiga in the surprising debut with five Major rookies, and brings an early end to HEROIC's campaign, dubbed their last dance with AWPer Álvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" García and coach Eetu "⁠sAw⁠" Saha before the duo moves to G2 in the off-season.

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SunPayus and sAw to join G2 after Austin Major

HEROIC go out with a whimper after Mirage fumble

The favorites will come to regret the opening loss on their Mirage pick, where they came up short despite having the map in their hands.

Nemiga pulled it back from a 1-6 start to their defense thanks to some individual prowess, with Ivan "⁠zweih⁠" Gogin's Deagle near connector and Maksim "⁠riskyb0b⁠" Churikov's AWP sequence in defense of B allowing the team to close the gap.

Once in the second half Beksultan "⁠khaN⁠" Ospan made all the difference with a 1v2 spray transfer and a crucial triple in a 3v5 situation at 10-11, which flipped the script on the map after sending HEROIC on bad economy after a late back-and-forth.

The 13-11 Mirage victory seemed to break HEROIC's spirits, as Nemiga entered Dust2 with an unanswered run of eight rounds before their opponents finally found a way back in with a 3v5 win on their own and a Andrey "⁠tN1R⁠" Tatarinovich 1v3 clutch.

Three rounds on the CT side might have been enough for HEROIC to turn it all around after a second-round forcebuy in the second half kicked off a run of success, but with no room for error they faltered against a partial buy at 9-11, and Nemiga seized the opportunity to close out the series in two.

Following the match, SunPayus was still positive about the end result in an interview on BLAST's broadcast and looked to his future after his goodbye tournament.

"I am sad about it, but to be honest I am happy anyway because we played good CS overall. These last two or three tournaments we saw that with the work we put in, we improved a lot, and I'm proud of the boys," the Spaniard said.