Astralis to the Grand Finals at IEM Katowice 2017
IEM Katowice favorites, the Danish team Astralis managed to break through to the Grand Finals after a win over Heroic at today’s semi-finals.
The two Danish teams played on two maps, Train and Nuke. Despite Train being Astralis’ choice, it was Heroic who began and maintained the lead to 7-2. Afterall, Heroic shocked everyone in the group stage by coming top of a group that featured Natus Vincere, Virtus Pro, SK Gaming, North and Cloud9. Coming out of the break Astralis had clearly used their time wisely, and picked up six straight rounds to surge ahead. Trading rounds back and forth, Astralis moved to map point at 15-10. Though Heroic attempted to force the map to overtime, Astralis closed it out at 16-12.
On Nuke it was Astralis’ turn to run away with things in the first half, repeating Heroic’s feat of five unanswered rounds. Astralis pushed it to 12-3 at the half. Heroic tried trading force buy rounds back and forth. Astralis had a 14-5 lead when the underdogs staged a comeback. Heroic managed to break Astralis’ economy and put them on the backfoot, racking up rounds until the deficit was just two rounds at 14-12. Astralis managed to reset Heroic just at the right time to move to map point, and showed their quality in closing out another 16-12 win.
So it is Astralis who’s playing at tomorrow’s final, where they will meet FaZe Clan—and former in-game leader Finn “karrigan” Andersen.Will they repeat their ELEAGUE win? We’ll find out.
