BLAST Bounty Season 2 opened with the favourites largely holding serve, as elite Counter-Strike returned from the summer player break.
The event's format, in which lower-ranked teams pick their own opponents, produces a mix of close ties and heavy mismatches. The opening day delivered mostly the latter.
MOUZ beat Nuclear TigeRES 2-0 to give Oldrich "PR" Novy a winning debut, though not without difficulty. They took Ancient comfortably on the back of their offence, then looked headed for a Nuke decider while struggling to read their opponents’ attack, before a Lotan "Spinx" Giladi round on the Deagle rescued a poor economic position and closed the series out.
Astralis needed a reverse sweep of their own. A troubled defence on Nuke let Nemesis threaten an early upset before Astralis took Ancient and Cache, with Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard and Love "phzy" Smidebrant providing the firepower on each.
Ninjas in Pyjamas swept M80 2-0 in the day’s most evenly matched tie. Martin "stavn" Lund was the best performer on the server, a strong T side settling Inferno before Kacper "xKacpersky" Gabara closed out the CT half of Ancient. The win followed a difficult stretch since the break that had included an early exit at XSE Pro League Guangzhou and a defeat to Virtus.pro at a BLAST Premier Rising event.
The day’s only upset by VRS rank came from Wildcard, who beat Alliance across two one-sided maps. Alliance arrived on a top-four finish at XSE Pro League Guangzhou and a 13-map winning streak on Inferno, but Wildcard dominated there and then cruised on Dust2, despite Alliance winning a string of first-half clutches and a second-half pistol ace from Jonatan "bobeksde" Persson.
The following day’s card featured Major winners Falcons against 100 Thieves, pitting Finn "karrigan" Andersen against his former long-time FaZe teammate Havard "rain" Nygaard.
Join the conversation — sign in to comment.
Sign in