What to expect from EG v. Vitality

Evil Geniuses come into BLAST Fall Groups with a tough task ahead of them. As the lowest-seeded team, they match up against the highest-seeded Vitality, the reigning Major champions. While it's true that Vitality have just made a change in the addition of Shahar "flameZ" Shushan to the squad, as a strong individual player, it's unlikely that he will buckle under the pressure of performing in his new team.

Evil Geniuses, too, made changes, promoting nearly the entirety of their academy squad to the main team, with Timothy "autimatic" Ta the only player remaining from the prior lineup. By no means will it be an easy feat for EG to take down the goliaths of Vitality. However, with little pressure heading into this event and a whole host of uncertainties, if there were any time for EG to do the unthinkable, it would be now.

A domestic force

EG Black cemented themselves as one of the strongest teams in the American region over the past few months. Routinely sparring with MIBR and Nouns, they are some of the best our region has to offer. Now, promoted to the main team, they also have the added benefit of autimatic's firepower, the lone silver lining in the former EG lineup. Of course, they're still miles behind the pure firepower of Vitality, but a man can dream, right?

• Recent 2nd place in ECL, good domestic placements

• Coming off of an EU bootcamp with better practice

• autimatic needs to bring some vintage 2018 firepower to the server

The best of the best

Vitality, they need no introduction. The best team of 2023 thus far, Vitality are on top of the world, winning the Major and IEM Rio along with a second-place finish at BLAST Spring Final. It would require a phenomenal collapse for Vitality to drop the ball here, but never say never, right? Truth be told, it'll be hard to catch the French-led squad off their feet, with a new addition breathing life and new blood into the squad, Vitality are hungry to cement themselves as the best team in the world.

• ZywOo is the best player of 2023

• flameZ is still an unknown, can he mesh with apEX's calling?

• On a hot streak

Previous Matchups

This EG roster is new to tier one Counter-Strike so they haven't had any experience up on this level before, and obviously not any previous matchups with Vitality. But, every player with years of experience all started with zero at one point!

Likely Vetoes
If there's any consolation for EG, it's that they permaban Anubis, which Vitality have a good track record on. Ancient isn't that large of a loss for EG, so we'll likely see EG pick Inferno as the first map of this affair. No matter what, it'll be tough for EG, but their map pool does have a good matchup against Vitality.

• EG bans Anubis

• Vitality bans Ancient

• EG pick Inferno

• Vitality pick Nuke

• EG ban Mirage

• Vitality ban Overpass

• Vertigo decider

Evil Geniuses vs. Vitality starts at 09:00AM and you can watch the game here.