In a rematch of their upper bracket matchup, Ninjas in Pyjamas got revenge against G2 Esports in the lower bracket final of Flashpoint Three. With the win, NiP will move on to the grand final, and play the red hot mousesports.
G2 had earlier sent NiP down to the lower bracket via a narrow comeback victory, winning Inferno in overtime and Mirage in round 30 after initially dropping Dust II. But NiP got on track with their own comeback train in the lower bracket, defeating both BIG and Heroic in three-map series after dropping the first map in both series. Now against G2, they’ve done it again.
The series began on Mirage, the site of G2’s map three victory in their first series. G2 continue their impressive run on Mirage, defeating the Ninjas 16-12 and stealing their map pick, having only dropped Mirage once in the tournament to FaZe after three overtimes. But NiP answered right back with a stolen map pick of their own on Inferno, reaching double digits on their CT side before half-time, and breaking G2’s economy with a successful force buy after G2 won the second half pistol. Fredrik ‘REZ’ Sterner, Nicolai ‘device’ Reedtz, and Nicolas ‘Plopski’ Gonzalez Zamora each had over 20 kills on Inferno.
The series moved to Dust II for the final map, and dev1ce had another stellar performance in his first NiP event. In fact, it was his best KD differential (+14) of any map since joining the Ninjas. Despite his strong showing, NiP still had to hold off a furious comeback from G2, who brought the map to round 30 after trailing 14-7. The final round came down to a matter of pixels, as a shot by François “AmaNEk” Delaunay hitting a CT backpack instead of the body allowed dev1ce to turn what should have a four-vs-two for G2 into a three-vs-three, with NiP eventually taking the final round, and the map 16-14.
The Ninjas’ first event couldn’t have had a rockier start, with the controversy surrounding their opening loss to Anonymo leading to their third map being restarted. NiP have come back from an ugly start to the tournament, and now have stringed together three straight comeback series to push themselves into the grand final. There they will meet a surprisingly dominant-looking mousesports team, who have not lost a single map during their upper bracket run at Flashpoint 3.
