Winners and losers at ELEAGUE Major 2018

The 2018 ELEAGUE Major is over, it’s time to look back at the results and find out who won the start of 2018, who didn’t.

Of the 16 teams that participated in the New Legends round of the Major, the participating teams all had different goals. As the SK roster was incomplete, FaZe was seen as a contender for the championship. Meanwhile, Astralis and G2 are expected to make it to the playoffs.

The Swiss group stage held in Atlanta saw many highly regarded teams such as Astralis, North and Gambit eliminated, while the dark horse of the Quantum Bellator Fire drew the biggest fairy tale twist of the tournament.

After the tournament entered the New Champion round, we witnessed some memorable maps. In the first bracket, the semi-final was a match between FaZe and Natus Vincere after the two sides defeated mousesports and Quantum Bellator Fire before. In the end, it was Karrigan’s army that took the lead.

In the other branch, Cloud9 defeated G2 and SK to reach the finals. In the final against FaZe, the match went to the third map, Inferno, with the map going to extra time. In the end, the host audience was overjoyed as tournament MVP tarik’s performance helped Cloud9 become the first North American team to win a Major.

The best maps

The winner

Cloud9

This roster has continuously improved since their ‘quick change’ in August, but they are not seen as major contenders for the Major. Cloud9 kicked off its journey in the New Challengers round, beating EnVyUs, Sprout and mousesports to move on to the next round with a 3-0 record.

In the second Swiss round, Cloud9 was on the verge of elimination after losing to G2 and Space Soldiers. The North American team regained confidence and beat Virtus.pro, Astralis and Vega Squadron with overwhelming wins to advance to the playoffs.

Cloud9 is getting better and better in every map they play. The team avenged G2 in the quarterfinals as well as defeated the defending world number one SK in the semifinals. All eyes were on the finals, when Cloud9 not only defeated the brightest candidate for the title but also broke an eight-time losing streak to FaZe to win.

Thanks to the brilliance of Skadoodle in the finals, who had the least impressive performance of the previous team, Cloud9 took the win after an intense three-map series. Cloud9 surpassed all expectations and made history as the first North American team to lift the Major trophy, clearly the biggest winner of the event.

fnatic

Thanks to the playoffs of the 2018 ELEAGUE Major, fnatic quietly made five consecutive appearances in the playoffs with Golden. The journey begins in Atlanta, ELEAGUE Premier in September, and continues at the WESG EU&CIS Finals, ESL Pro League S6 Finals and ECS S4 Finals.

In the New Legends round of the Major, fnatic went 3-2. The record may not be positive, but the defeats are due to facing FaZe with Natus Vincere. The Swedish team took three confident wins to enter the playoffs, defeating Virtus.pro (16-6), Astralis (16-8), and Gambit (16-2).

The team’s carry in the New Legends round was KRIMZ, who seemed to be revived under new leadership, while Lekr0 hit their peak in the quarterfinals against SK. Although fnatic could not overcome FalleN’s army, the match was extremely close (19-22 Inferno, 16-14 Overpass, 16-12 Mirage). It can be seen that fnatic’s level of competition is very impressive, and will create great confidence for the fans of this Black Orange shirt team.

Quantum Bellator Fire

The CIS team was lucky to take the runner-up position at the CIS Minor and did not impress anyone during the online competition. Quantum Bellator Fire was branded as the ‘laner team’ at the ELEAGUE Major 2018. But QB.Fire still managed to get through the door to the next round, thanks to wins over Flash and an EnVyUs without Rpk and AVANGAR.

The goal of this Atlanta team was “not to lose 0-3 in the New Challengers round”, and they surpassed all expectations, when they met Virtus.pro in the second round of the Swiss format. The victory over the Polish team may have been due to the NEO army malfunction, but the way Quantum Bellator Fire won the next day, against Gambit in Overtime, was completely unexpected.

Gambit didn’t seem to be in great form in that match, or the tournament as a whole, so QB.Fire is still a mystery to many teams. However, with a comeback against mousesports, Bloombla4, Kvik, balblna, waterfaLLZ and jmqa took their first Legends title in the Major. This shows that the team has complete personality and resilience.

By making it to the top 8, QB.Fire has secured a spot in the next Major, scheduled for August-September. Until then, the Russian team will have played many more games, enough to show us whether their journey at the Major was down to luck, or the rise of a new CS:GO force.

loser

North

Back a few years ago, no one would have thought leaving early in the Major group stage would be a major setback for Denmark’s second-placed team. However, things have changed a lot since then. Not only does Denmark have some of the best talent in the region, but the country’s second strongest team – North – doesn’t face the challenges faced by teams in previous positions.

Losing a player to a better team – Astralis – is something that hasn’t happened since they signed with North. But the organization also gets talent from other teams – aizy from FaZe and Valde from Heroic. The team has the facilities everyone needs, as well as a strong support system from coaches to analysts.

That doesn’t say much, although North hit a high level in mid-2017 with a few positive results, but then quickly dropped. Leading the team to positive results is down to k0nfig, but he is no longer the influential entryfragger he was during DreamHack Master Malmö and in the ESL Pro League S5 Finals. The 20-year-old finished the Major with below average stats, just like his teammates. Having lost three matches in a row, North quickly booked a plane ticket to Denmark early.

What’s worse is that the team loses to opponents who don’t make it to the playoffs: losing to Vega Squadron, Astralis – despite having an 11-4 lead at Train, and BIG. North’s performance at the Major was far below what the team had planned. With that result, there was a change: the cajunb was replaced by the talented AWPer mertz, promoted from the second tier team, while ave would take over the coaching role from ruggah.

Virtus.pro

Virtus.pro finished the Major with a 0-3 record, winning only 16 rounds out of 3 games played. They are the team with the lowest rating at this event, all five players only achieved an average rating of 0.70 and have the second worst score difference in the tournament. The Polish team’s poor performance and difficulties have been noted before, but this is the first time they have been eliminated in the group stage since Major DreamHack Winter 2013.

CS:GO’s oldest roster lost the Legends title to Quantum Bellator Fire, fnatic, and Cloud9. While these teams all made it to the playoffs, we cannot ignore Virtus.pro. They showed an extremely disappointing face in the league and did nothing to make us think that the team put up a tough fight against their opponents.

Poor results coupled with a lackluster performance from Virtus.pro have indicated the need for a substitution for the Polish team, with rumors circulating that TaZ will be the first member to be ‘beheaded’. If that does happen, the next question will be whether it will be enough to help Virtus.pro return to the glory of the past.

Gambit

Entering the Major after the break is what we feel through each game of Gambit. The CIS team showed a lack of sharpness, as players like mou, Hobbit performed below the level we normally see, and below the level needed to make it to the playoffs of the Major. Gambit still defeated Natus Vincere and the Space Soldiers, but the overtime loss to Quantum Bellator Fire cost them dearly.

On the final day of the group stage, Gambit faced SK and fnatic. Both games featured confusing veto (ban/pick) decisions from the CIS team, at least. Gambit against SK in Overpass and fnatic in Mirage – the maps are considered the strongest of the opponent.

Gambit lost both games and had to leave with a 2-3 record. In addition to the issue of veto, individuals underperforming, one thing that has come to light in Atlanta this time is the lack of clear leadership. There were times when the team looked completely lost, calls were made too late and their decisions were read too easily by the opposing team. How they will have to deal with the issues is still unclear, but with the current call system with Dosia and AdreN taking the blame, it doesn’t seem to work.

Astralis

With device struggling with his illness, Astralis is in a tough spot ahead of the Major. After ending 2017 with plenty of stand-ins, the 22-year-old returned to the main lineup in time for the big event, but faced a big question mark – how will they use him?

Astralis decided to continue the way they played at the end of the year and made dupreeh the main AWPER, while device played as lurk. Some might find dupreeh’s AWP quite effective, at least in the win against North, but overall the team didn’t do great, losing ‘convincingly’ to mousesports (16-2), fnatic ( August 16), and Cloud9 (June 16).

Astralis are certainly not the team that suffered the most when we factor in the device factor, but the fact that they are no longer the team that won the Major a year ago can’t be helped.

BIG

The German team was the surprise factor at the PGL Krakow Major, winning 3-0 in the group stage, beating the best team in the world on the run, but they were unable to capitalize on this at the 2018 ELEAGUE Major. The team was soon knocked out of the tournament. with a one-way outcome.

In the first game, gob b’s army was matched against Liquid, one of the easygoing, but completely defeated teams at Inferno, winning only 5 rounds for themselves. BIG then received another ‘slap’ on the same map, this time against Natus Vincere, losing 16 consecutive rounds after winning the correct pistol round.

BIG’s firepower duo tabseN and nex finally woke up against North, giving them a win at Cobblestone. But the team once again fell to the Space Soldiers. Overall, BIG is too dependent on the two stars of the team to stay in this tournament – ​​if nex and tabseN can’t heat up, there’s nothing BIG can do.

Source: HLTV