Photo credit: Adam Lakomy, ESL

• Date: February 1, 2024
• Tournament: IEM Katowice 2024 Play-in
• Format: Best-of-three (BO3)
• Stage: Play-ins
• Opponent: ENCE 
• Results: 0-2 (4-13 on Ancient, 10-13 on Vertigo)

Following a loss against Heroic in their first match of the IEM Katowice Play-in stage, the main team faced ENCE in a must-win match to advance further in the tournament. Unfortunately, the Danes lost after giving it their absolute best. Here's your full recap!

Putting up a fight in the sky

The first map of the night was ENCE's pick, Vertigo. Facing former Astralis IGL, gla1ve, and the rest of ENCE, the Danes started strong with a pistol-round win that helped secure the upper hand from the get-go. With Krzysztof 'Goofy' Górski leading the way, ENCE came back with crucial pre-plant plays to even the score. The rest of the half was mostly in favour of the Danish quintet, who won the half by a 7-5 score.

Sadly, the Danes lost momentum during the break before their T-side. Despite significant efforts, ENCE won the half with a 3-8 score, thus winning the map with a combined 10-13 score.

Positives from Vertigo:

• Staehr, blameF, and device all ended with positive ratings
• device took home the best rating of the map (1.38)
• device also secured the most AWP kills with 13 

Hard times on Ancient

Next up was the Danes' map pick, Ancient. Sad to say, the Danes' notable efforts on Vertigo did not leak onto Ancient. Starting on their T-side, the main team managed three round wins before going into the second half, in which ENCE needed only four round wins to end the Danes' adventure in the tournament.

Positives on Ancient:

• jabbi achieved a 1.33 rating on Astralis' T-side
• Staehr had the most 'first kills' on Ancient

Losing to ENCE means Martin 'stavn' Lund and co. are out of the tournament. It's never easy to lose, especially in a tournament as legendary as IEM Katowice, but the main team will keep fighting and come back stronger!

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