Astralis kicked off the ECS Season Five Finals today as the top contender in their group.
The Danes have solidified the first playoff spot at the $660,000 London event within Group A, which is the more stacked group of the tournament. They took down North American favorites Cloud9 and Team Liquid in their initial match and winners’ match.
Related: Everything you need to know about the ECS Season 5 Finals
C9 surprised Astralis with a phenomenal 13-2 CT side on Inferno, essentially stumping the Danish aggression. That momentum didn’t carry over to the second half, however, because Astralis answered back with a nice string of defenses of their own. C9 choked their 12-3 lead and Astralis closed out the first best-of-one 16-13 on top, with Emil “Magisk” Reif and Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz having the highest impact at 1.50 and 1.30 HLTV 2.0 ratings, respectively.
There was a similar storyline in the Liquid vs. Fnatic matchup, except Liquid didn’t choke like their NA counterpart. Liquid commanded the pace of Cache on offense at 12-3, but they couldn’t translate that same sort of style after halftime. With newcomer Richard “xizt” Landstrom acting as the new in-game leader, the Swedes found their way back into the map with numerous successful executes. Liquid won the game off of a huge flank from Epictacio “TACO” de Melo in round 30, ending Cache 16-14.
The winners’ match of the group was pretty uneventful though, with Astralis crushing Liquid on Inferno 16-6. Overall, the Danes were too much for Liquid to handle, with dev1ce topping the server at 24 kills.
Astralis are rewarded with a day off tomorrow thanks to their first place finish in Group A, and they’ll be playing in the semifinals on Sunday June 10 vs. the second place finisher of Group B. Competition in Group A continues tomorrow at 3:15pm CT with C9 vs. Fnatic in the elimination match and Liquid facing the winner of that match.
