Well, that was definitely a barn burner finish to Starladder. Welcome everyone to the third edition of CS:GO weekly news! Today we will be going over Starladder results, news about future LANs, as well as some roster mixups. We have a lot to cover this week, and you are probably short on time, so let us get started!
Before we talk about Starladder, we should go over some of the more minor news. The Chiefs won Acer CGPL, a small Australian tourney meant to help cultivate talent and provide entertainment to those down under! They won approximately $4,000 USD, which is not a bad payout!
Last years’ North American stand out team Selfless has really struggled in the ESL pro league and it’s roster has been dismantled by other teams scavenging the best players. Finally, the owner of the team had enough, and it released the entire squad. This is a big blow to an already struggling North American pro scene.
Hellcase has been sponsoring lots of tournaments lately. It added another one to its belt by sponsoring the Hellcase Cup Series which features a 40,000 USD prize pool. The qualifiers are open to anyone in the European region, and this tournament in meant to cultivate new challengers to the top squads in the scene currently.
Misfits recently added two French players to compliment their three US based players. The French duo consists of devoduvek and AmaNEk and will join the team in their house in the US. This move compliments the crew’s addition of notable coach Peacemaker, and Misfits hope to end up being a hugely competitive team in the near future.
Complexity added standout player Slemmy, who was scavenged from the aforementioned Selfless. The iBuypower invitational ended in a somewhat predictable fashion with Cloud9 winning it over Optic Gaming in the finals. Optic has looked impressive with JasonR, so look for his stand in trial period to lead to a contract with the team.
More details on the ECS season was released, and we now know that the finals will take place in UK. The UK scene is infamously weak, but they still maintain a strong fanbase. ESL One Cologne is a famous LAN with a rich history and is definitely considered a tier one competition. However it is, unfortunately, a week before the major, and that has lead to Astralis opting out, and more top tier crews are expected to opt out as well. Be sure to see what squads do end up attending the LAN in the end.
Who won the StarLadder?
Alright, enough of these minor pieces of news. We all know that you are waiting for the Starladder results and analysis. This was the first meetup of the biggest names in the scene offline for a while, and features a swiss group system with best of three quarter finals. It featured three Asian teams, but unfortunately, none of them were able to beat a strong opponent.
The squads that made it out of the groups were Faze, Astralis, CLG, Hellraisers, North, Navi, Fnatic, and G2. The most surprising missing crew from the playoffs were SK, who had a weak group stages and ended up losing to Faze in the 2-2 round five matchup for the last few playoff spots. CLG and Hellraisers were newcomers who impressed in the groups and qualified with 3-2 and 3-1 records respectively.
CLG ended up losing to Astralis in the quarters 2-0, but managed to keep both maps close. They are the first North American team since C9, Liquid, and Optic to make the playoffs of a major LAN, and they did well for their first time. This young crew is something to keep an eye on.
Hellraisers were actually able to beat North in the quarters 2-1 in a major upset, and this combined with their solid online performances lately seems to signify the arrival of a new tier two team. Faze were able to trump G2 and Navi dispatched of Fnatic in the other two quarterfinals. G2 was looking unstoppable in the group stages, but Faze was able to put an end to their run in three tightly contested maps. Navi, the home squad, was only able to take down Fnatic thanks to a surreal performance from Guardian and the loud crowd support.
The semi finals featured Faze taking on Hellraisers and Navi battling Astralis. Faze was a huge favorite to beat Hellraisers, but HellRaisers had actually managed to beat them in the group stages, so there was definitely upset potential. Luckily for Faze, they were able to win the first two maps to win 2-0. Both maps very very close, however, with the final scores being 16-13 and 16-14.
Astralis took down crows favorites Navi in two maps as well, as Guardian simply disappeared. The star who had carried Navi to the semi finals had the worst Kill to Death ratio in the whole server by a considerable margin. This lead to a finals matchup between Faze and Astralis, the same battle as the finals in IEM Katowice.
Astralis won IEM Katowice 3-1, but Faze was the winner here as the won in three maps 2-1. The first map was mirage, Faze’s pick. They had a strong T half with eight rounds, but were unable to close and lost 16-14 in a battle that must have felt like the mixed European crew should have won.
Astralis had chosen to pick Nuke instead of their strong suit Train and it cost them dearly. Rain’s squad demolished Astralis, not letting them pick up even ten rounds. The final map was the newest addition to the pool, Inferno. Astralis started strong and built up a 10-5 lead. They ended up also having the first two Starladder points as well, at 15-13. However, behind their double AWPs, Niko and Allu managed to lead their guys into overtime, where they won 19-17. Expect more out of Faze in the future, as they seemed to have finally figured everything out.
Thanks for reading my weekly news article, check out the Dota 2 weekly articles as well if you are interested and be sure to look out for a new weekly CS:GO news article next week. I hope you enjoyed and I will see you next time! Good luck!
