The Brazilian Derby: paiN vs MIBR recap

The opening round of BLAST Premier Spring Showdown Americas came up with some interesting first-round matchups, with paiN and MIBR playing one another in the opening round. Coming off a strong EPL performance, paiN looked to impress, and that they did, almost winning in two maps, but assuredly winning in three.

zevy on fire

In both the maps that paiN won, Romeu "zevy" Roccowas an absolute monster, posting a 1.70 rating on Anubis and a 1.35 rating on Vertigo. His performance on Nuke was lackluster, posting an even kill-death ratio on paiN's own map pick. Nuke went to double overtime, so if zevy had played up to his normal performance, we'd be talking about a dominant 2-0 game instead of a close 2-1 affair.

To compound his impact, he was the highest-rated CT player for paiN on all three maps, cementing his presence in the server. It was mostly his Nuke T-side performance that struggled. Nonetheless, zevy played out of his mind despite that small hiccup and deserves the props his team are surely giving him.

Compare zevy's performance on the big green compared to MIBR's AWPer, Henrique "HEN1" Teles. HEN1 posted only a 0.91 rating over the three maps, a far cry from what zevy was able to accomplish.

Not so insani today

Since his promotion to the main roster, Felipe "insani" Yuji has impressed with his fragging prowess against decent opposition. However, paiN were adequately able to shut him down, keeping insani to just a 1.01 rating, far below his 1.24 average over the last three months. MIBR has come to rely upon insani's individual performances to push them across the line in tough situations, but he was just not up to snuff in this game.

We can sing zevy's praises again for this though, as zevy had an incredible 19-3 head-to-head against insani, utterly shutting him out of rounds throughout the whole series.

What's next?

paiN now have to take on the winner of Liquid vs. Nouns. While this game is sure to be an exciting one, Liquid will most likely come out on top. Somewhat surprisingly, this is a good matchup for paiN, as they beat Liquid 2-0 quite recently at ESL Pro League, and in fairly dominant fashion. While Liquid will of course be more prepared the second time around, paiN's recent success against the North American team bodes well for their chances at making the finals, and eventually Washington D.C.

If Nouns do pull an upset though, we have a very interesting game in our hands. paiN have historically fared very well against the Nouns core, but recently, Nouns have improved heavily, and with that, actually took their most recent series against paiN. It was an arduous game, with all three maps going at least 29 rounds, but Nouns did win it out, giving us an enthralling game moving forward, if that's how the Nouns vs Liquid game pans out.