After four intense days of IEM Katowice Group Stage, our Counter-Strike team has finished their tournament run at a shared 7th-8th place alongside NIP, with a prize of $24,000.

The group stage started out against Brazilian FURIA, who featured an intense and explosive playstyle, which meant a 0-2 starting loss, meaning all consecutive matches would be played with our back’s against the wall. That didn’t seem to be a problem though, as we fought ENCE 2-1, first with a 19-16 OT loss in Mirage, followed by two wins on Overpass and Ancient to secure lower semi-finals early Sunday.

Here we met fnatic, where the two first maps were won confidently by the opposing teams, Astralis winning on fnatic's map pick Inferno and vice versa on Overpass. The deciding map, Ancient, was close and competitive right until overtime, where Astralis locked the win with 4 winning rounds in a row, placing them in the lower finals against G2 later the same day.

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The lower final featured a mental power struggle, starting off with a 0-8 round deficit to G2. After a quick timeout, the Astralis roster returned re-energized to the match, ending the first match 16-12.

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The next to maps had G2 in the driver seat, however, first showing well-performed executions at their map pick, Dust2, followed by a show of force on Inferno, ending our run in IEM Katowice.

Next up for our Counter-Strike roster is ESL Pro League Season 15, starting on March 9.