FaZe take down Astralis, secure place at BLAST Fall Final

FaZe booked their place in the BLAST Premier Fall Final with a 2-1 victory over Astralis in the Last Chance Stage. The European side were bested in an overtime affair on the second map of Ancient, but seemed in control on both Inferno and Nuke with 16-9 and 16-10 victories, respectively.

FaZe will be pleased that they have locked in their place at the Fall Finals after a relatively shaky start to the season thus far, notably falling to both the No. 13 and No. 15 ranked Heroic and OG earlier on in the tournament. Helvijs “⁠broky⁠” Saukants, in particular, had a strong performance, with numerous clutches and high-fragging output being the difference-maker in powering his side to a much-needed victory over the home-town favourites.

With this result, Astralis have been sent down to the BLAST Premier Fall Showdown. The Danish squad will need to fight their way through that event versus the likes of BIG and Complexity if they want to make an appearance on home soil at the Fall Final in November.

Inferno played host to the two teams to kick things off, with FaZe successfully hounding the A site round after round to drum up an early 5-0 lead on the T-side. Assertive banana control and proactive AWPing by Asger “⁠Farlig⁠” Jensen on the defense allowed the Danes to claw themselves back into the game, bringing the score back to 7-8 by the swap.

FaZe surged ahead at the start of their defensive effort, overturning an Astralis pistol round victory with five of their own to go up 13-8. The remainder of the half saw little movement on the Danish side of things, with a near-flawless defense powering the European combine to a 16-9 scoreline to lead 1-0 in the series. The Danes were unable to find a way to shut down the menacing duo of Robin “⁠ropz⁠” Kool Håvard “⁠rain⁠” Nygaard, with the pair putting up 1.54 and 1.38 ratings, respectively.

rain showed up to play on Inferno with a 1.38 rating — his best map of the whole tournament

Despite being on the T-side, Kristian “⁠k0nfig⁠” Wienecke finally awoke at the start of Ancient — adding 12 kills to the scoreboard to spur his team on to a 5-4 scoreline by the midpoint of the first half. FaZe recovered somewhat towards the end of the half’s end, though, adding three of the final four rounds to head into their T-side just one round behind.

Much like Inferno, FaZe stole away the second round after losing the pistol, this time thanks to a 1v3 clutch by Russel “⁠Twistzz⁠” Van Dulken. A strong defense by the Danish side followed, though, with Astralis nabbing five on the bounce to run away with things at 14-10. Just when things looked all said and done, however, FaZe started to find form and the two sides finished regulation at 15 apiece after two, scrappy rounds to end things, forcing a trip to overtime.

A nail-biting 1v3 clutch by broky on the first round of overtime got FaZe off on the right foot, but Astralis answered right back with two rounds of their own to go one round ahead. From here on out, executes on both sites from the Danish quintet would prove to be all that was needed for Astralis to clinch the map 19-16 and force a decider on Nuke.

k0nfig was the difference-maker for Astralis on Ancient, leading the way with a 31-22 K-D

ropz, who had a relatively quiet Ancient by his standards, returned to the server ready to play as he led his team to a comfortable 5-2 start on the CT-side of Nuke with eight kills. Astralis began to claw their way back, finishing on the upper site twice in a row to break the economy of their foes. In spite of this, a round win which began with just pistols by the European combine in the 11th round flipped things on its head, and FaZe used the momentum to go on and win the half 10-5.

Four kills with the Dual Berettas by Lukas “⁠gla1ve⁠” Rossander in the pistol round got the ball rolling for Astralis, who used this to steal away a further four more rounds to tie things up, 10-10. A stellar 1v4 ace clutch by broky at 13-10 summed up a dominant resurgence by FaZe, and the European mix wasted no time in snowballing this as they closed out the game out, 16-10.