Astralis brush past Cloud9 in ELEAGUE Premier opener
Cloud9 return to the ELEAGUE Arena after winning the ELEAGUE Major earlier in January of this year. Since then, the team have been rife with instability, with the team unable to find the form that won them a major championship in Boston. With two of their strongest players departing the roster and the team fielding two European stand-ins in Atlanta, Cloud9 would have to prove themselves against the best team in the world in the first match of the event.
The series kicked off on Inferno, with Astralis taking the first two rounds off the bat. Cloud9's stand-ins shone in the third round, with Maikil "Golden" Selim opening up the B site with two kills, giving Cloud9 their first round. Cloud9 maintained their momentum through another four rounds, taking the lead before trading rounds with Astralis. The Danes took back the lead after four rounds of their own, before trading with Cloud9 once again, giving him a narrow advantage at the end of the first half 8-7.
Going into the second half, Astralis kept their lead, taking three clean rounds off Cloud9. After a 3K from Golden and a retake from Timothy "autimatic" Ta, the Americans reset Astralis' economy, giving them room to take back a narrow lead 11-12. Likewise, Astralis retaliated by confidently taking four rounds to reach map point 15-12. Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham and Martin "STYKO" Styk wouldn't go down without a fight however, leading Cloud9 through three more rounds to force overtime.
While the road to overtime took a valiant effort for Cloud9, Astralis showed no mercy in overtime, easily taking the first three rounds of overtime to put them back on match point. The second half of overtime was even more detrimental for Cloud9, with a perfect round from Astralis closing the first map 19-15.
Astralis continued to ravage Cloud9 on the start of Overpass, taking five of the first six rounds after a loss in the second round. Cloud9 slowly began to build up a scoreline with Golden and STYKO becoming two of the most prominent fraggers on the team. Astralis continued to remain highly competitive, leading the game at halftime 9-6.
Despite a solid pistol round from Cloud9 in the second half, Astralis slowly began to take control of the game again, with Nicolai "device" Reedtz leading his team through two rounds before Cloud9 struck back with a round of their own. Astralis remained unfazed by the round win from the Americans and remained resilient, easily taking the last five rounds to close the map 16-9 and wrap up the series 2-0.
AstralisCloud9| Astralis |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Nicolai 'device' Reedtz |
65 - 32 | +33 | 104.5 | 89.8% | 1.75 |
| Emil 'Magisk' Reif |
48 - 36 | +12 | 84.1 | 71.2% | 1.19 |
| Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen |
38 - 38 | +0 | 71.5 | 69.5% | 1.07 |
| Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth |
36 - 37 | -1 | 74.1 | 71.2% | 1.06 |
| Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander |
35 - 38 | -3 | 70.3 | 72.9% | 1.04 |
| Cloud9 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Timothy 'autimatic' Ta |
44 - 43 | +1 | 82.2 | 74.6% | 1.07 |
| Tyler 'Skadoodle' Latham |
43 - 42 | +1 | 76.8 | 66.1% | 1.05 |
| William 'RUSH' Wierzba |
31 - 43 | -12 | 66.5 | 66.1% | 0.82 |
 Martin 'STYKO' Styk |
30 - 45 | -15 | 61.3 | 61.0% | 0.75 |
 Maikil 'Golden' Selim |
30 - 51 | -21 | 62.5 | 52.5% | 0.63 |
Astralis move on up to the winners match, where they will face the winner of Liquid vs MIBR, which is set to begin later today. Cloud9 have been knocked down to the elimination match, where they will await the loser of the aforementioned match.
