Sulfur
The two former French camps have become the first two teams to book their seats at the adult’s table in Antwerp.
Vitality started their journey by obliterating COL into pieces by defeating them 16-1 on Inferno. They continued their Day 1 journey by meeting familiar faces in Astralis, and we’ve already talked about that legendary match yesterday.
The Day 3 match today was against forZe and you’d be forgiven for thinking it could be an easy peasy 2-0. It was far from that.
Team Vitality vs forZe
On Vitality’s pick of Nuke, they found themselves down 2-9 on their T side. They did manage to salvage a 6-9 half, but it wasn’t enough since Snappi and his men had quite a good stretch of T-sided rounds themselves. The first map hadn’t gone according to plan for zonic’s men, and the stage was set for a legendary upset here.
On the Russians’ pick of Dust 2, it was a completely different story. Vitality absolutely schooled them by winning their first-half CT-side 13-2. It was a disaster. forZe did put up a huge, huge fight, thanks to great openings from shalfey, but it simply wasn’t enough. The map ended 16-9 in Vitality’s favor, and the tussle had been moved to Mirage.
Things started quite even on Mirage. Vitality took the lead, lost it, and took it again. It was 6-6 at one point and looked good for both, but Vitality managed to close their T side out 9-6. That’s pretty much a death sentence these days, 9 on the T side. forZe won their obligatory rounds here and there, but Vitality kept them in check till the very end.
The French-Danish camp won the map, the match, and the stage.
✅ Challengers Stage
⏳ Legends Stage
⏳ Playoffs pic.twitter.com/DV61xmRmdL— TEAM V1TAL1TY (@TeamVitality) May 10, 2022
G2 started their final journey after Vitality had ended their own. It was the high-flying ENCE they were to play against, and it was clear from the get-go that a win would be 2-1. ENCE were simply too strong to lose on Ancient, a map they’ll definitely pick. (Not Nuke since G2 are much weaker in the jungle than they are on nuclear power plants.)
The question was, will they step on their own maps?
ENCE vs G2 Esports
The match started on G2’s pick of Dust 2.
m0NESY getting 7 opening kills on the T side aptly sums up G2’s 9-6 first-half win. The dude just stood in T Spawn and out-AWP-ed anyone who tried to combat him. Crazy. G2 were of course more than individual prowess, though, as Aleksib and his book of strats stood strong during their CT side, dropping just one round out of eight. Dust 2 had gone G2’s way 16-7.
The next map was ENCE’s playground, their domain. Snappi and his men started the game on the T side and looked like they were completely running away with the win. In the blink of an eye, they were 7-1 up, before G2’s CT-side finally started to catch on. They strung 5 rounds together to make it 7-6, only to lose to ENCE’s half buy.
The half ended 8-7 in ENCE’s favor, and though it looks pretty bad to win just 7 CT rounds on Ancient, we gotta admit that it’s a much better result than where 7-1 was heading. G2 continued their streak into the second half, winning the pistol and converting the following two.
But then the guns came out on ENCE’s side, and things turned out just as we expected them to: G2 will have no answers to ENCE’s rock-solid defense. ENCE regained the lead from 8-10 down to 14-10 up, thanks to great tactics and Spinx’s heroics. It took a very fast and aggressive round from G2 to end that 6-round win run, with NiKo running quickly into B and getting great early kills there.
G2 showed their hand at the perfect time. They ran 2-3 great strats to win 3 T-sided gun rounds, and the two anti-eco wins were just the cherry on the top. Just like that, they had undone a lot of ENCE’s progress and reached map and match point, 15-14. But ENCE is the best on Ancient for a reason, and that reason took them to overtime when they won the 30th gun round with 4 alive.
The overtime was barely competitive; ENCE won it 4-1 to even out the odds in this match and take us to Mirage.
The first half of Mirage was exactly same as that of Ancient, except the names were interchanged. It was G2 that took a 7-1 lead. ENCE then pulled it back to 7-6 and then dropped the next round before winning the last round.
8-7 in favour of G2.
The second half was probably the most exciting half of CS played so far in the Major. It was literally forcebuy wars, with the CS gods tipping the scales in favour of Aleksib one too many times.
ENCE won the pistol, but then lost to G2’s forcebuy. Then they pulled out their own forcebuy and won it as well. But then G2 did the same and won another forcebuy. Then ENCE pulled out yet another forcebuy, and were on the cusp of winning it. But with just 7 seconds remaining, Aleksib pulled out an insane 1v2 clutch where he one-tapped hades and quickly killed dycha and defused the bomb with milliseconds to spare.
THE IGL MONSTER FOR YOU ONCE AGAIN pic.twitter.com/66AZW2fnte
— G2 Esports (@G2esports) May 10, 2022
Unreal.
Every round after that went G2’s way, no matter what ENCE did. No matter the advantage, no matter the kills, G2 always found a way. It was intense and nail-biting, and quite unfair to ENCE, to be honest.
With that, G2 become the second team to go 3-0 here in the Challenger’s Stage.
WE MADE LEGENDS STAGE LETS GOOOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/6F86oOr4c7
— G2 Esports (@G2esports) May 10, 2022
They’ll get a few days now to chisel and sharpen their map pool, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing even better sides of G2 and Vitality in the Legends’ Stage.
What about the others?
On the other side of the spectrum, though, the Australians in Renegades and SA’s 9z become the first two teams to book their flights back home. Sad day for SPUNJ; he really was expecting Renegades to get at least one win here.
Team Liquid were the ones to defeat 9z by the way, so they surely saved their own glass from elimination. But now they’ll be facing COL, which means an NA team has been tasked to eliminate the other. Not allies anymore, not emotional support friends anymore. They have to fight and establish who really is NA’s Number 1.
Can’t wait for the two final days of the Challengers’ Stage. I’m wondering if a 2-0 team is gonna go 2-3 and crash out. forZe or ENCE? XD
