TYLOO see off Complexity in Cologne

The FISSURE Playground champions keep themselves in the race for a Stage 2 spot after a hard-fought win.

TYLOO move on to the second lower bracket round of IEM Cologne 2025's Stage 1 with a 2-1 victory against Complexity in a high-octane elimination series.

It's a disappointing early exit for the North American squad after the quarter-final run at FISSURE Playground a week ago. Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou's troops will be kicking themselves for letting victory slip through their fingers as they wasted a 10-5 lead on the decider map of Ancient, with Håkon "⁠hallzerk⁠" Fjærli admitting that his team "struggled" against full buys.

"We couldn't figure out how to end the rounds," the Norwegian AWPer said.

He added: "We need to get some more practice in. Then we need to grab the next opportunities we have. We don't have that many tournaments anymore, I guess we're falling a bit down in the rankings. We need to take every opportunity we will have."

Complexity went for an Overpass pick, perhaps in the hopes of exposing the frailties shown by TYLOO on this map against Virtus.pro the day before.

Back-to-back pistol wins earned the Chinese side a six-round buffer in the game, but they struggled to impose their will in gun rounds, with Complexity locking down the map in the final round of regulation after their early aggression put them in a favorable 5v3 situation.

TYLOO came out on Inferno looking a different side as they romped to a 7-1 lead on the T side. Complexity then enjoyed a spell of dominance and brought the deficit down to two rounds, but TYLOO kept a very tight defense once they had money in the bank and went on a 5-0 run to secure the map.

Complexity were in control for the majority of the first half of Ancient and picked up a 7-5 lead on the CT side, with hallzerk and Nick "⁠nicx⁠" Lee leading the charge with a combined 25 frags.

The North American team carried that momentum into the second half and quickly got into double-digit territory after a string of rounds. But the complexion of the game changed once TYLOO were able to buy. They showed nerves of steel and only dropped one round in the rest of the half, keeping their Stage 2 hopes alive and knocking Complexity out of the tournament.