CS:GO FLASHPOINT stage 1 recap
MIBR set Group B alight to impress in Round 1 of the new CSGO league, FLASHPOINT. Joining MAD Lions and Cloud9 as the nine-point teams. Gen.G and Dignitas were the teams who really failed to reach their expectations, with both teams only winning once, setting them up for a redemption arc in Round 2.
MAD Lions took revenge on Finnish underdogs HAVU who upset them in game one to top Group A. acoR and Bubzkji clearly had a bone to pick, as they combined for +36 in a 2-0 in the final game of the group, after HAVU snuck a 2-1 victory in the first game. The removal of HUNDEN was a major talking point, but it didn’t seem to hinder their ability to steamroll past Copenhagen Flames and c0ntact.
HAVU finished second in Group A, having impressed in their first stint at a popular tournament. As mentioned, they stole a victory from MAD Lions, and they then took down c0ntact despite going one map down, smashing them to pieces on Train, 16-5. A solid team performance didn’t leave any of their players in the top 10, but sLowi’s 1.14 rating did raise some eyebrows - especially seeing ENCE’s weak performance at ESL Pro League.
c0ntact started their reign under the new name on fire - well, they doused the Copenhagen Flames, so quite the opposite. SHiPZ dropped 100 ADR on the Danish boys, but as we came to learn, that didn’t mean much. CPH Flames finished bottom, keeping c0ntact away from the 4th spot, and c0ntact got just one map against the other two in the group.
CPH Flames were always going to need a serious upset - the team lost their IGL just before the tournament started to MAD Lions, who ended up topping the group. refrezh joined the team as a replacement, but he’s no AcilioN in terms of leadership, at least not yet, and their inexperience ended up showing.
MIBR started off slow, getting 2-0’d by Chaos as smooya helped take them apart, but in the rematch, smooya wasn’t present due to VISA issues, and MIBR took revenge to top the group. fer looked back to somewhere near his best; outside of two MAD Lions players and smooya - who played two maps - was the best player at the tournament. When fer is good, MIBR are a massively different threat.
Chaos managed to get second place even with smooya missing for most of the maps. The aforementioned win over MIBR was big, but 2-0’ing Gen.G with their star AWPer out of the picture is even more impressive. They performed more as a team with him missing, with vanity being the best performer without taking over the game - he only went +6.
Gen.G seriously disappointed - these guys looked unstoppable in their first tournament together, but losses to Chaos and MIBR are not what we’ve come to expect, especially in the latter, as BnTeT was the one who seriously struggled to get anything done. In fact, his FLASHPOINT so far has been pretty poor, rocking a 0.96 rating over the tournament.
Envy were - perhaps predictably - the worst team in the group. LEGIJA and ryann finished phase one as the two lowest rated players, and though they did win a map against Gen.G, this turned out to not be as impressive as we initially thought.
Cloud9 beat FPX in their first - and only - game in CSGO. Sonic and oSee were the top performers for them in the whole of round one, and Sonic won a 1v5 in FPX’s only game, and the same two combined to crush Dignitas 2-0. A 2-1 victory over Orgless made it an unbeaten start for C9, who somehow look like the most convincing team at FLASHPOINT.
Orgless beat out Dignitas despite being massive underdogs to finish second in Group C, thanks to WARDELL and Infinite going a combined +44 over the three maps. Their other victory was a forfeit victory over FPX, who after es3tag’s move to Astralis, it turned out, did not actually own the team they thought they did. Dignitas beat Orgless the first time around, but the second time, Orgless had them beat.
Dignitas with GuardiaN turned out to be just as bad as you would imagine. The team with an average age of 29 were unable to keep up with the young’uns, losing two of their three games to C9 and Orgless. They didn’t get a chance to play FPX, though, while the other two teams got a win off them, so maybe they can feel hard done by.
We'll continue checking out the FLASHPOINT action here at GGRecon.
Image via ESL.
