What to expect from Complexity v. Eternal Fire

Complexity will play against Eternal Fire in the opening round of IEM Katowice Stage 1. The North Americans look forward to bouncing back after their uninspiring debut at BLAST Premier Season 1 earlier this month. While Nicholas "nicx" Lee and Danny "cxzi" Strzelczyk had a rough start against Virtus.pro, Eternal Fire made it to the grand finals of BLAST Bounty thanks to İsmailсan "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş' impressive form.

Can nicx and cxzi perform in tier-one?

That's the main question Complexity fans are asking themselves after nicx and cxzi arrived to replace Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski and Ricky "floppy" Kemery. It's hard to tell based on the game versus Virtus.pro at BLAST Bounty as the duo didn't have much time to practice with their new teammates and against tier-one teams.

Not only that, but it remains unlikely that anyone on Complexity will be able to match EliGE's firepower. The superstar consistently put up great numbers throughout 2024 and is one of the best players in the world in his role.

This hard task of replacing EliGE should be Michael "Grim" Wince's responsibility as he's way more experienced and showed in the past that he's good enough to be a star player.

On a good day, Complexity is perfectly capable of beating a team of the caliber of Eternal Fire, but they'll need both Grim and Håkon "hallzerk" Fjærli to show up against XANTARES and Özgür "woxic" Eker.

Eternal Fire are one of the favorites to advance to Stage 2

It's impossible to not consider Eternal Fire a serious contender after their amazing results at BLAST Bounty. The Turks dispatched Fluxo, Falcons, Vitality, and G2 before losing to Spirit in the grand finals.

Much of the heavy lifting was done by XANTARES, but woxic also had a good tournament, and at this point, every CS fan knows that Ali "Wicadia" Haydar Yalçın is a pretty capable rifler too.

Likely vetoes

Eternal Fire is good on a handful of maps, but without a doubt, their best map in 2025 so far is Anubis as they have defeated Spirit, G2, and Vitality on it.

Curiously, Anubis is the map Complexity played the most in the past three months despite not having the chance to play it against Virtus.pro at BLAST Bounty as the series finished before the third map. This leaves us to conclude that Complexity and Eternal Fire will likely play on Anubis.

• Complexity ban Mirage

• Eternal Fire ban Ancient

• Complexity pick Train

• Eternal Fire pick Anubis

• Complexity ban Dust2

• Eternal Fire ban Nuke

• Inferno is left as the decider

Complexity's chances to beat Eternal Fire lie in how much they improved on Train since the Virtus.pro match. Complexity can't afford to ban the map as they regularly picked Vertigo before.