FPX Rise To The Top At Snow Sweet Snow
After months of finalising their revamp, FPX have officially won their very first tournament. They climbed the European ladder during Snow Sweet Snow and completely dominated their opponents. The reigning champs faced Gambit Esports in the finals with a victory after going into map three. The Chinese org has waited a long time for their time to shine and put Asia on the map in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).
Snow Sweet Snow was a great opportunity for amateur teams to fight their way through a twenty-six-day event. All four of the playoff invitees fought hard to earn a first-place finish, but FPX took home forty-grand at the end of the day.
ACADEMY TEAMS
The regional group stage saw a lot of academy invites and qualifiers including Young Ninjas, VP. Prodigy, and Astralis Talent. VP.Prodigy struggled at the beginning of the tournament which ended in an 0-2 finish.
Young Ninjas, on the other hand, mirrored NiP’s main roster by ruling over their opponents. They won two out of three matches before entering the regional swiss stage.
Astralis Talent fell short compared to most of their opponents, and lost their footing which ended in a 1-2 defeat. The Young Ninjas were the only academy team to make it into the top fifteen where they lost a majority of their matches but came out with a humble thousand dollar prize.
REGIONAL SWISS STAGE
After days of competing, the two strongest teams in the regional swiss stage were the Izako Boars and the Lyngby Vikings. Both orgs recently switched out their lineups for stronger divisions. The Izako Boars recently signed Michal "mono" Gabszewicz and Daniel "STOMP" Plominski for 2021.
Both players took control at Snow Sweet Snow and earned a top twelve finish with six thousand dollars. As for the Lyngby Vikings, Niels Christian "NaToSaphiX" Sillassen showed an excessive amount of talent following his partial release from Nordavind. They eventually fell apart in the main swiss stage and took home three thousand dollars with a lot of experience.
MAIN SWISS STAGE
Once the smaller teams were finished battling it out for what seemed like weeks of nonstop competition, the bigger teams entered the main swiss stage. Both ENCE and Winstrike Team finished with perfect records and earned well-deserved spots in the playoffs.
Dignitas hit rock bottom after spending a significant amount of sweat equity into their revamp. ENCE, Sprout, Winstrike, forZe, GODSENT, Endpoint, Sangal Esports, and the Izako Boars eventually made the top eight after the main swiss stage.
Sadly the one underdog team that made it to the playoffs eventually lost to GODSENT. It was only up until the quarterfinals when the top four teams including FPX began their journeys at Snow Sweet Snow.
LEADING UP TO SNOW SWEET SNOW
The four playoff invites included FPX, Gambit Esports, SAW, and Virtus.pro. Before entering Snow Sweet Snow, FPX was busy finalising their roster for 2021. They acquired Chris "chrisJ" de Jong on loan from mousesports and made their debut at the DreamHack Open in January.
They finished in second-place after a close best of three set against Team Spirit. Gambit Esports finished in fourth at that event while Sprout and forZe sank to the bottom of the prize pool.
SAW on the other hand recently finished a run at the OMEN WGR European Challenger with a second-place finish. The B-Tier event was much smaller than DreamHack but still hosted some extremely talented lineups.
THE PLAYOFFS
FPX faced off against forZe in a close best of three matchup in the quarterfinals. ForZe absolutely smoked FPX on Dust 2 and won by fourteen rounds. FPX realised that they had to come back on Nuke with a new and refreshed mindset.
Dust 2 was their first game on, and they weren’t prepared to throw away a forty-thousand dollar opportunity. They had a hard-fought battle on Nuke and secured the map with a two-round finish. Despite FPX winning map three, forZe put up a good fight and even went into overtime in the end.
Next up was SAW, a team that had just destroyed ENCE in the quarterfinals. FPX went into the best of three with a better grip on their team’s setup and structure. Unlike their set against forZe, FPX didn’t even need a best of three decider.
FPX VS GAMBIT ESPORTS
They had a strong start against SAW, and each player carried their own weight with a sense of consistency and talent. The only team standing in their way of the grand prize was Gambit Esports.
In an unpredictable fashion, FPX earned a good majority of their highlights in the finals. ChrisJ, in particular, held his ground with the AWP and proved he was one of the best players at Snow Sweet Snow.
While his overall rating wasn’t the highest compared to his teammates, chrisJ earned some of the more important kills. On map one he made a super clean 1v2 and stopped Gambit from taking their fourteenth round. ChrisJ followed up with a stunning three-piece on Overpass and finished his stroke of luck with a 1v2 on Dust2.
Images via FPX | Twitter