Vitality are through to BLAST Premier Fall Finals following their 2-0 victory (16-12 on Overpass and 16-14 on Nuke) against Astralis at the BLAST Premier Fall Group A winners’ match today.
The two-time best CS:GO player in the world Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut was, per usual, one of Vitality best fraggers (43-30 K/D) in this series. This time, he got the help of the veteran Richard “shox” Papillon, who finished the series with a 49-41 K/D. It’s a tough loss for Astralis, especially because they had plenty of opportunities to win Nuke, but instead allowed Vitality to came back from an 11-4 disadvantage.
With this victory, Vitality are the first team qualified for the BLAST Premier Fall Finals at the end of November, which is going to be held on LAN in Copenhagen, Denmark with a $425,000 prize pool up for grabs.
As for Astralis, they’ll have to wait for the result of Evil Geniuses vs. Team Liquid later today and beat the winner tomorrow to secure a spot in the LAN tournament without having to attend the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown in October.
The Danes are playing their first tournament without in-game leader Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander, who is on paternity leave, which led Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth to return to the starting lineup after missing out the action in ESL Pro League season 14.
EG vs. Liquid will start at 12:30pm CT, and the winner will face Astralis tomorrow at 9:30am CT for a spot in the Group A final against Vitality plus the guaranteed spot in BLAST Premier Fall Finals.
