Sent Down to Lower Bracket After Tough 2-0 Loss Against Vitality

July 31, 2024
anders funder
  • Date: July 30, 2024
  • Tournament: BLAST Premier Fall Groups 2024
  • Format: Group B Upper Final (BO3)
  • Opponent: Team Vitality (European)
  • Result: A 2-0 loss (13-7 on Nuke and 13-11 on Dust 2)

After a tough 2-0 defeat to Vitality in the Group B Upper Final, the Main team was sent down to the Lower Bracket and will face off against Falcons again in the Consolidation Final on Friday, August 2.

The second clash against Falcons at the BLAST Premier Fall Groups will kick off at 14:30 CEST.

jabbi: Their reads were pretty unusual and exposed our game plan too many times. It's better to come close to an epic comeback than get completely crushed.

The loud-speaking French in-game leader Dan "apEX" Madesclaire and his Vitality squad secured the victory with a 13-7 win on Nuke (our map pick) and a 13-11 win on Dust 2. They are now only one win away from the Fall Final as the top seed in Saturday's Group B final. This matchup could potentially lead to another rendezvous with Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz and Co. at the BLAST studios in Copenhagen.

Astralis vs Vitality Stats

  • flameZ: Most kills (39)
  • flameZ: Most damage (87.9)
  • device: Most assists (11)
  • ZywOo: Most AWP kills (9)
  • device: Most first kills (7)
  • flameZ: Best rating 2.0 (1.44)

jabbi: Their reads were pretty unusual

Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard was interviewed by Retake shortly after the match. Here's what the 21-year-old lurker said:

"They took some risky rounds along the way, and there were a lot of challenging moments today. Their reads were pretty unusual and exposed our game plan too many times. It's better to come close to an epic comeback than get completely crushed," said jabbi.

"It's frustrating right now. We should've won on Dust 2 but needed to do many things better throughout the match."

"ruggah (head coach, ed.) told us to stay calm so we wouldn't get too stressed in the tight rounds when the game was on the line. We needed to keep trusting our own game because we have a lot of strengths to bring to the table," jabbi noted.

Our Danes had a tough time on Nuke, especially on the T side, were they couldn't really power through and set the tone. Instead, we saw the 21-year-old Israeli Shahar "⁠flameZ⁠" Shushan in his anchor role, dominating Ramp on Nuke and securing the most kills (20).

The first half ended 9-3 before the rosters switched sides. On the CT side, our lineup didn't manage to string together a comeback. It ended up even at 4-4, but the first map was lost. Still, our in-game leader dev1ce ended up having the most assists (6), the most AWP kills (1), and the most first kills (4) on Nuke.

Our players tried to make a difference on Dust 2, but Vitality still came out strong even though they lost the first three rounds on the T side. From there, they almost subsequently took home seven rounds and went into halftime with a 7-5 lead. The events in the second half saw our Danes really fighting for their lives, giving their all, almost forcing the duel into overtime, but a 6-6 half couldn't prevent the European roster from Vitality from taking home Dust 2 13-11 and the overall series.

Dust 2 Stats

  • apEX: Most kills (21)
  • device: Most damage (89.0)
  • jabbi: Most assists (7)
  • ZywOo: Most AWP kills (9)
  • apEX: Most first kills (5)
  • apEX: Best rating 2.0 (1.47)
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