Astralis defeat FaZe to punch their ticket to the semifinals of the ECS Finals

Astralis have reached their first semifinals since October thanks to a successful first day at the $750,000 ECS season four finals.

In today’s matches, the Danish team topped both Cloud9 and FaZe Clan in their best-of-one matches in Cancun, Mexico. Astralis’ wins, while using Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel as a stand-in, puts them at the top of Group B and in the semifinals.

Related: Fnatic emerge on top of Group A at the ECS Season Four Finals

Train against Cloud9 started off rough for the Danes, until they finally made adjustments to the explosive North American offense. C9 may have won the second pistol rounds, but Astralis’ slower, methodical Terrorist playstyle gave them the advantage over C9 later in the game. That factor compounded as Peter “dupreeh” Rothmann’s 18 AWP kills, six entries, and 27 overall kills gave them the win at 16-11.

On Overpass, FaZe put up a much tougher fight, as both teams traded rounds throughout the entire game. Even though the Danes lost multiple anti-eco and other winnable rounds, they still won many of the crucial gun rounds. They also shut down many of FaZe’s star players, with Nikola “NiKo” Kovac being the only big performer, especially since he’d just come off of a 40-kill win against Team Liquid. RUBINO had the biggest impact in Astralis’ 16-13 win, while also dropping 32 kills and a 116.6 average damage per round.

Astralis’ next matches will be in the semifinals on Dec. 17, when they’ll compete among Fnatic and two to-be-determined teams from the remaining Group A and B matches, which will take place tomorrow.