Vitality's Era Is Only Just Beginning
The BLAST Premier: Fall Finals featured a stacked line-up of top-tier opponents, with each and every team possessing the ability to upset even the best and the brightest of the bunch. Right in the middle, Team Vitality sat with their six-man roster. Hot on the heels of an IEM Beijing EU victory, these Frenchmen were the team to beat. Over the course of their last events, Astralis had slowly geared up for this occasion. Natus Vincere were still on the lookout for revenge, after suffering a terrible reverse-sweep in the Grand Finals of IEM Beijing at the hands of Vitality. After struggling for the better part of 2020, mousesports had finally made it to a Grand Finals again and even got close to defeating Astralis on some maps.
Vitality had the difficult task of navigating these waters, but they started their tournament run off with a bang. On Inferno and Dust2, mousesports only got 15 rounds in total for their efforts. Cédric “RpK” Guipouy effortlessly secured a 1.94 rating on the first map, while Richard “shox” Papillon and Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut took the lead on the second one. The mouz players were easily bested, which led Vitality to Natus Vincere next. This was a re-match of their IEM Beijing Grand Finals, where Natus Vincere had lost despite an early 2-0 lead in terms of maps. This time around, they were determined to finally secure a victory over the Frenchmen.
NATUS VINCERE UNABLE TO TAKE REVENGE
On Nuke, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev took the lead and cracked the 30-bomb, while Vitality struggled to keep up. Even ZywOo only got a 1.13 rating for his efforts, but at least he dragged his team into overtime, where the Frenchmen finally got the victory on a 19-15 scoreline. Once again, the teams tied the first half on Dust2. NaVi were within an inch of Vitality, and for a second time in this match-up, they had to enter overtime. Egor “flamie” Vasilyev was forced into a 1v2 situation. While he did get the kills, Adil “Nivera” Benrlitom’s molotov sealed the deal even after his death. With a shockingly small margin, Team Vitality edged out Natus Vincere for the match victory.
After having won these Best-of-Threes, going up against BIG seemed like no big deal. But the Germans were actually the first ones to take a map off of them, beating them in a surprising 16-9 fashion on Vertigo. But Vitality still had an ace up their sleeves in the form of Nivera. Inferno and Dust2 being his home maps, they brought the young gun in and let him do his work. Over the course of the two maps, BIG only secured a total of three round wins. There was almost no opportunity for the likes of Nivera to really shine, because BIG didn’t even pose half of a challenge on these maps. So after a first-map scare, Team Vitality confidently marched on into the Grand Finals.
Natus Vincere surely had hoped for a re-match, but they didn’t even get this far. Astralis took them out beforehand in a decisive 2-0 fashion, showing that they had definitely learned their lessons and improved ever since those last few events. Edging past BIG as well, they soon found themselves in the Grand Finals alongside Vitality - the two arguably most successful six-man rosters facing off against each other.
WOULD ASTRALIS FINALLY BE ABLE TO TAME ZYWOO?
The Frenchmen were more than determined to make this match-up theirs, striking first blood with a ridiculous 16-4 victory on Vertigo. Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander only secured two kills over the course of the entire map, whereas Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier put up the performance of his lifetime with 26 kills and a 2.12 rating. After such a blowout victory, Vitality were all but guaranteed to close it out on Dust2, but fortunately for Astralis, their star players finally got going. Nicolai “device” Reedtz, Emil “Magisk” Reif, and Peter “dupreeh” Rasmussen put up a great show and held their team in this match. Leading on an 11-4 scoreline after the first half, they looked to close this map out early on. However, Dan “apEX” Madesclaire dragged his team back into the game and Vitality soon found themselves on a 14-13 lead. Maybe they felt like they had broken Astralis, but somehow they gave the Danes a way back into this. With a 16-14 win, they narrowly edged out Vitality for a third and last map.
Unfortunately, this decider felt more like an extension of Vertigo. After Nivera had struggled to come out big on Dust2, he made up for it alongside RpK and ZywOo on Inferno. An Ace clutch from gla1ve couldn’t keep the Danes in these Grand Finals, as they conceded a 5-16 map and gave way for Team Vitality to grab the trophy of the BLAST Premier: Fall Finals.
IS THIS THE BEST VITALITY WE HAVE SEEN YET?
It is quite difficult to put this tournament into perspective. Ever since the addition of Nivera, Team Vitality have grown beyond even their best former selves. This is now a six-man team, where every individual can pop off and deliver world-class performances against the best teams in the world. In this Grand Finals, we saw RpK, misutaaa, and apEX all step up to the plate next to the usual top performers like ZywOo and Nivera. Astralis had been on a steady climb since the return of Xyp9x and beating Natus Vincere was just one indicator for them finally reaching the next level in their journey.
This makes this Grand Finals victory all the more amazing. Vitality have unlocked a new performance high against a team that had just done the very same earlier on. Astralis looked so incredibly strong against so many teams throughout the BLAST Premier: Fall Finals. For them to lose this decisively against Vitality, the Frenchmen have had to bring all their guns to the fight. On two of the maps in this Grand Finals, the Danes didn’t even look remotely competitive!
All eyes are now on Vitality to prove that they’re able to completely integrate Nivera for a deep strategy and map pool, which will make it impossibly difficult to read and counter them. Considering that this is only their third tournament with Nivera (all of which they won, by the way), we have all the reason to believe that they’re here to stay at the very top of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) for quite some time to come.
Images via @TeamVitality
