Twistzz and FaZe are heading to the Legends stage
After faltering yesterday against ENCE, FaZe has made it through the Challengers stage of the BLAST.tv Paris Major following their win over Forze today. With FaZe's qualification, Russel "Twistzz" Van Dulken's presence in the Legends stage guarantees that the North American fans will have someone to get behind following Complexity's elimination at the hands of Liquid today, and with Liquid themselves still yet to progress at 2-2.
Opening up on the Russian team's pick of Overpass, Forze struggled to close out rounds on their T-side. Breaking into the bombsites on multiple occasions, Forze only managed to post three rounds on their offensive with FaZe successfully retaking five times throughout the first half and securing a comfortable cushion of 12-3 at the break.
A pistol round win and the two follow-up rounds put FaZe on map point at 15-3, but the defensive side for Andrey "Jerry" Mekhryakov's squad started to show resistance as they began their slow crawl back into the affair. Winning nine straight rounds, Forze brought it all the way back to 15-12 and looked to be on the brink of forcing overtime before FaZe, fortunately, closed it out 16-12 and sent the two teams to Nuke.
Moving on to FaZe's pick of Nuke, the former Major champions looked to be cruising toward progression after their first-half performance. Starting on the T-side, Twistzz powered his team into a commanding 9-6 lead heading into the break, with 15 kills to his name which was more than double the next most productive player on his team with Robin "ropz" Kool and Finn "karrigan" Andersen on 7 kills each.
Forze managed to win their first pistol round of the series to kick off the second half of Nuke, winning the follow-up to narrow the deficit to just one. Despite some back and forth and some close rounds, FaZe began to pull away on their defensive side as Twistzz continued to put up numbers and FaZe reached match point at 15-9. FaZe were not to choke today, however, closing out 16-11 and securing their spot in the Legends stage.
FaZeFORZE| FaZe |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Håvard 'rain' Nygaard |
46 - 40 | +6 | 95.7 | 67.3% | 1.31 |
 Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken |
38 - 34 | +4 | 69.4 | 72.7% | 1.12 |
 Helvijs 'broky' Saukants |
38 - 34 | +4 | 64.6 | 76.4% | 1.02 |
 Robin 'ropz' Kool |
31 - 38 | -7 | 74.6 | 65.5% | 0.90 |
 Finn 'karrigan' Andersen |
29 - 37 | -8 | 57.9 | 65.5% | 0.86 |
| FORZE |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Aleksandr 'zorte' Zagodyrenko |
42 - 31 | +11 | 81.3 | 76.4% | 1.26 |
| Vladislav 'Krad' Kravchenko |
39 - 37 | +2 | 72.9 | 72.7% | 1.05 |
| Aleksandr 'shalfey' Marenov |
31 - 32 | -1 | 68.3 | 69.1% | 1.00 |
| Andrey 'Jerry' Mekhryakov |
34 - 41 | -7 | 71.5 | 76.4% | 0.99 |
| Evgeny 'r3salt' Frolov |
35 - 43 | -8 | 70.6 | 67.3% | 0.86 |
