Astralis and Na`Vi book playoffs spots at ELEAGUE
Astralis and Na`Vi are the first two teams to book their ticket to the playoffs at ELEAGUE by taking down Liquid and mousesports, respectively. The winners' matchups saw Astralis handedly take down Liquid 2-0 to start the day, while Na`Vi had a far closer run with a 2-1 win over mousesports.
The opening match of the day saw Astralis and Liquid face off on Nuke and Mirage, with Inferno as the decider. The final map wouldn't be needed as Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz stepped up for the Danish side, putting up an impressive performance on both of the initial maps to secure the playoffs slot for Astralis.
A seemingly dominant 7-0 lead on the T side of Nuke for Astralis rapidly crumbled as Liquid surged back for an 8-7 scoreline in their favor, but with the second pistol round in hand Astralis quickly fought back to reclaim the lead and left Liquid with few openings towards the latter portions of the first map.
Although Liquid managed to steal away four rounds, Astralis maintained control to close out Nuke 16-12, taking the series to Liquid's pick of Mirage.
Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen joined dev1ce in the fragging department on Mirage, allowing Astralis to secure a relatively dominant CT side half. Despite Liquid winning their T side pistol round and ensuing anti-ecos, the Danes were still able to put up nine rounds to Liquid's six to carry the match into the second half.
Astralis' T side would prove to be too much for Liquid as dev1ce and co. took their third pistol round of the series. After following up Liquid's first gun round victory with a full economic reset, Astralis found they were able to close out the match with a dominant 16-7 scoreline with Liquid being offered no chance to redeem themselves.
AstralisLiquid| Astralis |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Nicolai 'device' Reedtz |
50 - 30 | +20 | 83.8 | 74.5% | 1.41 |
| Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen |
42 - 33 | +9 | 93.2 | 86.3% | 1.40 |
| Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander |
39 - 32 | +7 | 83.5 | 78.4% | 1.20 |
| Emil 'Magisk' Reif |
28 - 31 | -3 | 63.8 | 74.5% | 0.95 |
| Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth |
24 - 31 | -7 | 59.0 | 70.6% | 0.88 |
| Liquid |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Keith 'NAF' Markovic |
43 - 36 | +7 | 92.0 | 68.6% | 1.21 |
| Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken |
29 - 34 | -5 | 65.2 | 66.7% | 0.91 |
 Jonathan 'EliGE' Jablonowski |
28 - 38 | -10 | 72.0 | 58.8% | 0.89 |
| Nick 'nitr0' Cannella |
30 - 38 | -8 | 58.7 | 62.7% | 0.86 |
 Epitacio 'TACO' de Melo |
27 - 37 | -10 | 64.8 | 64.7% | 0.83 |
The second matchup of the day was a far closer affair as Na`Vi and mousesports were set to face off on Inferno, Train, and Mirage, with Na`Vi's pick of Inferno up first.
Inferno saw a scrappy back-and-forth as neither team were able to secure more than two rounds in a row in the first half, with a 3-0 lead by mousesports after winning the pistol round being the sole exception. A fantastic overall game from Tomáš "oskar" Šťastný allowed mousesports to just barely edge out a win in the end, putting them up 1-0 in the series after taking down Na`Vi 16-14 on their map pick.
The remaining two maps were far more difficult for mousesports as Denis "electronic" Sharipov and Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev combined to pick apart the European team. A dominant 12-3 first half on Train allowed the CIS side to quickly move to series to a third map, with electronic finishing the map on 115 ADR and 27 frags.
Na`Vi initially seemed set to run away with Mirage as well — a 5-0 lead coupled with a full reset after mousesports snagged their first gun round gave them all they needed to shut down oskar and co. early on; however, mousesports managed to stabilize, giving up only 2 additional rounds in the half to narrow the deficit to a single round at the half.
A stellar performance from s1mple early on gave Na`Vi a healthy bed of rounds to play around with, and a second half pistol victory allowed the team to snag another 5 rounds for themselves to sit just shy of match point. A small comeback attempt from mousesports seemed to be on the cards, but three kills from electronic on an eco round shut down their hopes to allow the CIS side to close out the match 16-11.
Natus VincereMOUZ| Natus Vincere |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev |
63 - 37 | +26 | 80.8 | 78.8% | 1.29 |
 Denis 'electroNic' Sharipov |
64 - 47 | +17 | 81.8 | 81.2% | 1.23 |
| Ioann 'Edward' Sukhariev |
52 - 48 | +4 | 77.0 | 71.2% | 1.06 |
| Egor 'flamie' Vasilyev |
46 - 46 | +0 | 62.2 | 72.5% | 0.99 |
| Danylo 'Zeus' Teslenko |
46 - 57 | -11 | 68.0 | 70.0% | 0.92 |
| MOUZ |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tomáš 'oskar' Šťastný |
62 - 49 | +13 | 79.2 | 65.0% | 1.18 |
 Janusz 'Snax' Pogorzelski |
55 - 56 | -1 | 80.8 | 78.8% | 1.05 |
 Miikka 'suNny' Kemppi |
50 - 52 | -2 | 69.4 | 70.0% | 0.97 |
 Chris 'chrisJ' de Jong |
35 - 61 | -26 | 56.1 | 71.2% | 0.83 |
 Robin 'ropz' Kool |
33 - 53 | -20 | 53.0 | 58.8% | 0.75 |
With these wins, Astralis and Na`Vi have advanced to the ELEAGUE Premier semifinals. They await the final two teams to emerge from Groups A and B. Liquid are next set to face off against the winner of the Cloud9/MIBR matchup, while mousesports will take either FaZe or fnatic. Tomorrow will see these two elimination matchups played out, with Cloud9 facing MIBR at 2 PM EDT to start the day.
