StarLadder Major: New Legends stage continues as NRG, ENCE advance

Day three of the CSGO New Legends stage at the StarLadder Major was a big one. Today we saw two teams advance with a 3-0 score to the New Champions (playoffs) stage. A lot of upsets and unexpected wins took place. Today’s featured matches saw Team Liquid versus AVANGAR, Vitality take on ENCE, and Astralis battle NRG.

AVANGAR cause massive damage to Team Liquid

Team Liquid was expected to advance in the StarLadder Major with a 3-0 score. This year’s NA team has looked incredibly strong on LAN, showing an immensely deep map pool and overall fragging power. After Liquid lost the North American derby yesterday against NRG, today AVANGAR managed to somehow overcome them on Overpass. Moreover, they did it following a double overtime.

The match became extremely tight in the second half of regular time, as a blow by blow matchup emerged. Overtime was even more hectic, as whenever one side pulled slightly ahead, the rival pulled right back. AVANGAR eventually managed to get ahead and, to everyone’s surprise, defeat Team Liquid 22-18 on Overpass. Jake “Stewie2K” Yip’s flashiness was a little needed on the map, as he had a poor performance. Team Liquid go 1-2 while AVANGAR somehow manage to go up 2-1.

ENCE shows class against Vitality

Today’s first best-of-three matchup of the StarLadder Major, and the first of the New Legends stage, pit Vitality against ENCE. The map turned out to be mostly an outclass, as ENCE looked extremely fresh against Vitality. The Finns first defeated Vitality on Nuke 16-10, following an expert counter-terrorist side, before dealing with the French on Dust2. On the second map, ENCE had the upper hand from the very start, and the half went their way, 11-4. On their terrorist side, the Finns only let Nathan “NBK-” Schmitt’s side get 3 rounds before knocking them out of the ballpark. Dust2 finished with a disappointing score of 16-7 for ENCE. The Finnish side advances to the playoffs while Vitality will continue fighting with a 2-1 score.

Aleksi “allu” Jallii had an outstanding performance on both Nuke and Dust2. He got 55 frags and an HLTV Rating 2.0 of 1.74 from both maps. It was an incredible show of skill. Meanwhile, Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut was more than disappointing, closing out his team’s scoreboard overall. While he was hot for the past two matches, in this matchup he was more than lackluster for his side.

NRG and Astralis throw down

The second StarLadder match featuring teams with a 2-0 score saw them go blow-for-blow in essentially a double match on Train before moving onto Nuke. Train became a true test of stamina for both sides, but NRG somehow managed to outlast the Danes to bag the map with an implausible 31-28 score. Even though the match-up went through two maps, it felt like Train was a double map in itself. Phenomenal AWPing from Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov definitely proved one of the biggest factors. The Bulgarian showed expertise by sniping down 43 enemies on Train, out of 52 total kills.

Unfortunately, the second map, Nuke, was much less exciting. Once known for being the most dominant on Nuke, Astralis lost miserably to NRG. It seems like NRG’s mojo carried over from that extreme overtime win on Train. The only player that looked somewhat alive on Astralis was Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth, as the most clutch player in CSGO clutched a 1v4 and a 1v2 to keep Astralis in the game. Unfortunately for them, the 12-3 loss at the half guaranteed the win for NRG as they went all in to close things out on t-side. They swiftly took the four rounds to make it 16-4 on one of Astralis’ best maps. NRG advance to the playoffs while Astralis go down 2-1.

What did you think of today’s CSGO results at the StarLadder Major in Berlin? Let us know down in the comments below. Remember to follow us at Daily Esports for all your latest news in CSGO as well as other major esports.