Astralis bested Cloud9 in their first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive match at IEM Katowice 2020. The two teams met up in a best-of-three series for today’s tournament. Playing Overpass and Train, Astralis pulled a 2-0 victory over Cloud9’s newest roster.
IEM Katowice 2020 kicked off today in Poland with Astralis and C9 facing off. The tournament continues this week through Mar. 1. Sixteen teams are competing for an opportunity to take home part of a $500 thousand prize pool.
Astralis will now move forward to the Group A upper-bracket semi-finals. The squad will play Vitality, who won their first match today versus Ninjas in Pyjamas. Likewise, C9 moved to round one of the lower brackets and will face-off against NiP for a spot in the lower-bracket semi-finals.
Map one: Overpass
The two teams met on one of Cloud9’s favorite picks, Overpass. Astralis started the first half on the counter-terrorist side and had a stronghold against Cloud9. Astralis won the pistol round, then C9 won four rounds in a row. Cloud9 was unable to continue its momentum, though. Astralis won an astonishing ten rounds straight, ending the half at 11-4.
Swapping sides, Astralis once again won the pistol round. Following the same pattern as the first half, C9 then had a three-round streak. Not a team to let their opponent capitalize off momentum, Astralis swiftly ended the match by snagging the last four rounds (16-7).
Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, performed exceptionally well on Overpass. He ended the map with an impressive 1.81 rating and 26-8-1 KDA. A fan-favorite moment was dev1ce’s incredible 2v1 pistol clutch to snag round twelve.
Map two: Train
Map two, Train, was Astralis’ pick. Train isn’t the their most played map, but their statistics show a consistently strong performance. Cloud9 started the first half on the CT side. Train is typically a highly CT-sided map; however, Cloud9 barely managed to end the first half ahead at 8-7. Furthermore, most of the rounds were extremely close. Ricky “floppy” Kemery, was a standout for Cloud9. He managed an amazing 1v4 clutch on their CT side that wowed both the audience and casters.
But Astralis bulldozed any attempt Cloud9 had on their terrorist side. Keeping in line with a more expected Train CT side, the match ended after a 9-4 Astralis CT half, and the final match score was 16-12. Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth performed particularly well on Train for Astralis. He had both the most kills and the most damage in the server. He ended the map with a 1.65 rating and monstrous 109.0 ADR.
