A new-look Astralis won over Ninjas in Pyjamas on Day 1 of the BLAST Premier: Fall Final Wednesday. Kristian “k0nfig” Wienecke and Benjamin “blameF” Bremer, the two newest additions to the Astralis roster, showed up big in the 2-0 victory with 60 and 49 kills respectively.
The new addition for NiP, Patrick “es3tag” Hansen, struggled to find the same impact with only 25 kills across the two maps and a 0.69 HLTV 2.0 rating.
Nuke easily went the way of Astralis, 16-7. Overpass was more hard-fought, going to overtime before the Danes came out on top yet again, 19-16. The third game was set to take place on Mirage, a map that has traditionally been outside of Astralis’ comfort zone. The addition of k0nfig and blameF, both old hands on Mirage, appears to have spurred the team to bring it back into their map pool.
The match win for Astralis is something of an upset, the team having struggled at the recent PGL Major 2021. With Emil “Magisk” Reif and Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen replaced by the ex-Complexity Gaming duo in k0nfig and blameF, Astralis look to have found new life, at least for the time being. The match also marked a number of converging storylines with es3tag matching up against his former Complexity teammates and his former org — albeit briefly — in Astralis, as well as NiP’s Nicolai “device” Reedtz playing his old team.
The rest of the matches in the first round of BLAST Fall proceeded without significant upsets. Red-hot Natus Vincere swept aside BIG, Heroic beat FaZe Clan in two close games and Team Vitality dominated Team Liquid. None of the matches went more than two games.
Astralis play again at 11 a.m ET on Nov. 25 against Vitality in the upper bracket. Ninjas in Pyjamas play for their tournament lives at 10 a.m. ET on Nov. 26 against Liquid.
