What We Learned from BLAST Premier: Fall Groups

The results of BLAST Premier: Fall Groups have reassured CS:GO fans that the successes and failures that preceded it were not flukes. The winning teams continued to prove their strength while the losing ones continued to lose. There were, however, a few pleasant surprises as well, and they will be discussed below.

BLAST Premier: Fall Groups Results

BLAST Premier: Fall Groups consisted of 3 separate groups that didn’t interact at all with each other. All of the 12 participants moved forward. The top 6 qualified for the Fall Finals while the bottom 6 for the Fall Showdown.

Group A

In Group A, the battle looked fierce from the start and indeed it was. Evil Geniuses had 0 chances of winning even a single match and they didn’t even win a single map. This was expected given the names of the other 3 teams: Liquid, Vitality, and Astralis.

Vitality started with a victory against Liquid (2 – 1) and made it clear that what had happened at ESL Pro League Season 14 was not an accident. The French squad is in great shape again and ZywOo is hard-carrying again.

In the Upper Bracket Final, Vitality encountered Astralis, who had defeated EG. The battle on each map was very close but in the end, the French team won with a score of 2 – 0.

A slightly surprising result took place in the Lower Bracket Final, where Astralis managed to beat Liquid after losing the first map. It seems that no matter how hard FalleN’s team tries, it still cannot beat the top opponents that are blocking its access to great results.

In the Grand Final, Astralis had first pick and chose to play on one of their former glory maps, Nuke. And it seems that they’ve managed to patch some of the holes that had been previously exploited by the likes of G2 and Vitality. The final score was 16 – 10 in favor of the Swedes, but the next two maps, Vertigo and Dust2, clearly favored the French side. The defeat doesn’t mean much for Astralis because of the BLAST Premier: Fall Groups finalists have qualified for the Fall Finals.

Group B

The second group of BLAST Premier: Fall Groups looked just like the first: 3 teams fighting for the top 2 positions and an underdog with 0 chances of winning a match. The strong teams were G2, NiP, and BIG, while the underdog was MIBR.

In the first two matches, G2 dismantled MIBR (2 – 0) while NiP had an easier than anticipated battle against BIG (2 – 0). In the Upper Bracket Final, the confrontation started with a very deceptive victory in favor of G2, on Ancient. This was the first official Ancient run for G2 and they seemed to be very well prepared.

Given the fact that Ancient is NiP’s strongest map, everyone assumed that the match was over after that. Because not only G2 defeated NiP on what was supposed to be their best ground, they also did it in a very convincing way. The final score was 16 – 7 and NiP had won 7 out of its previous 8 games on that map.

But after this loss, NiP simply regrouped and beat their opponent on Mirage (16 – 14) and Inferno (16 – 9). An even bigger disappointment for G2 came in the Lower Bracket Final against BIG. The German organization defeated the French one with a score of 2 – 0. Both maps were challenging but in the end, BIG won, sending G2 to the Fall Showdown matches.

In the Grand Final, NiP narrowly lost the first map (14 – 16) but then won on Mirage (16 – 13) and Inferno (16 – 5).

Group C

In Group C, everyone knew from the start that Na’Vi was going to win. After all, s1mple and his crew had just won the Intel Grand Slam and their opponents were not even close to their level. The battle for 2^nd place should have taken place between OG and FaZe Clan. But the two teams were forced to play against each other in the Lower Bracket Round 1, after both of them lost in the Upper Bracket Round 1. The winner was FaZe.

In the Upper Bracket, Na’Vi won 3 matches in a row: against OG, Complexity, and FaZe. All 3 teams caused them some problems, but not enough to make them lose. The runner-up was FaZe Clan, which had defeated OG and Complexity in the Lower Bracket.

 

Photo credit: IEM|Simon-Howar