From play-ins to top eight: FNATIC Halo take down G1 at Worlds in fairytale victory

FNATIC’s first season in Halo Infinite has been marked more by its extreme lows than its highs. Yet with a roster only formed before the Orlando Major last month—changes made in response to their shock top 20 exit from the NA Super—FNATIC has taken down Gamers First and made it to top eight at Worlds.

It was a nail-biting five game series that came down to the wire, despite how G1 was predicted to take an easy victory considering their recent string of top eight and top six finishes in previous tournaments. FNATIC’s strategies had the raw and unrefined quality of a team so newly-forged, but some incredible performances from the likes of Juziro and Suppressed allowed the underdog to steal away a 3-2 victory that adds to the event’s growing tally of shock results.

Predictions that G1 would comfortably take the series seemed warranted given their performance in game one’s King of the Hill match on Live Fire. Bubu Dubu steamed ahead with 14 kills and 5 deaths to his name, one of the few standout performances in a game that lasted only minutes before G1 took a flawless 4-0 victory.

But the FNATIC that loaded into Slayer on Catalyst for game two was an entirely different beast. It was instead FNATIC that was making aggressive pushes into the G1 spawns, consistently getting value out of the Overshield and Skewer to extend an ever-growing advantage. Sceptify and Suppressed were the ones leading the charge, both achieving identical 9.7 KDA’s with 16 kills and 18 kills respectively. A 50-37 scoreline put FNATIC firmly back in contention, and the margins for map victories would only get tighter from there.

Oddball on Streets was chaotic, made no better by the need for a map restart in the deciding third round due to a player on G1 crashing. The game was a rollercoaster for FNATIC’s strategy and playmaking, with round one decided by time after both teams fumbled the objective, and then round two confidently won by FNATIC off the back of an early Overkill from Juziro. Unfortunately for FNATIC, their misplays from round one reared their ugly head again in the third and final round, allowing G1 to slip away with a lead in the series despite Juziro mustering over 30 kills alone for his team.

Both game four and five were nail-biters. FNATIC converted a chaotic start to Capture The Flag on Aquarius into a narrow 3-2 win, prioritizing the Active Camo and Heatwave pickups to great effect following a 1-1 stalemate in the early game. After turning a counter capture into two captures in a row to get that 3-2 advantage, FNATIC chose to defend rather than get greedy, absorbing the G1 push and getting the win as the timer ran out. Juziro once again stood out with 26 kills and 19 deaths by the end of play.

What looked to be a surefire win for FNATIC in the fifth and final game—especially after their earlier Slayer performance on Catalyst—almost slipped from their grasp in its closing stages. Despite the team in orange being able to acquire every single Overshield spawn, G1 never allowed them to run away with the advantage. This meant when a FNATIC flank went horribly wrong in the game’s closing stages and all four members went into the respawn screen, the game ground to a halt with a tie score at 44-44. One final Overshield grab and a clutch final Sniper Rifle kill from Sceptify was just enough for FNATIC to stumble over the finish line with a 50-48 win, and the energy from the players was electric.

G1’s Bubu Dubu was stranded on an island in the series statistics, topping the entire lobby with a 1.32 K/D ratio while his three teammates all failed to break even, languishing beneath the 1.0 mark. On FNATIC’s side, it was no surprise to see Juziro achieve the most kills with a round 100 overall. He and Suppressed combined for healthy 1.16 and 1.15 K/D ratios respectively.

It’s a stunning defeat for G1, and suddenly means that FNATIC has gone from having to battle through a last chance qualifier to having a shot at top six in the final event of the year. After previously being unable to finish a Major event any higher than top 12, it’s an incredible last minute turnaround for a squad that nobody expected to show up in Seattle. They’ll face Oxygen Esports next later on tonight.