Astralis ease past Cloud9 to reach playoffs in Cologne

Astralis have progressed from Group B of IEM Cologne over Cloud9. They first won Inferno with a 16-11 scoreline before dominating proceedings on Mirage where they prevailed with a 16-8 scoreline to secure their spot in the LANXESS arena.

The Danes will now face the winner of the game between Spirit and FaZe to proceed straight to the semi-final, where they will hope to continiue their recent upturn in form, while Cloud9 will be fighting for a quarter-final spot through the lower bracket, first facing the North Americans of Liquid.

Cloud9 began the series with a hot start on Inferno, going 3-0 after a successful defense on the pistol round. Astralis didn’t take a long time to respond however, as they went on a six round streak started by a pistol rush on to the A site to take a lead they would keep all throughout the map. The Russian team managed just two more rounds on their CT side, meaning Astralis went into the second half with a 10-5 advantage.

The Danes won the second pistol round and started their defensive half in good stead, going up 14-5 and looking like a dominant side on the map. It wasn’t quite over however, as Cloud9 managed to put together a six round streak and no doubt started to worry Astralis fans, but the team led by Lukas “⁠gla1ve⁠” Rossander managed to get the two rounds required to close out the map 16-11.

Nothing worked for nafany on Mirage

Next up was Cloud9‘s pick of Mirage, where Astralis were able to continue their good form and race to a 5-0 lead before the Russian side got their names on the scoreboard. Success for Cloud9 didn’t last long however, as the Danes went straight back to dominating and put the scoreline at 9-1. The end of the half was a more scrappy affair, as Dmitry “⁠sh1ro⁠” Sokolov and Timofey “⁠interz⁠” Yakushin were both able to win a 1v2 clutch and break the Astralis economy in the process, which enabled their team to reduce the disadvantage to 10-5 at the half.

A pistol round win for Cloud9 looked to make the game close, but Astralis immediately fought back with a force buy, eventually going 12-6 up. The Russian side won one of the rare CT rounds in the series with an eco round, which was also the round where Vladislav “⁠nafany⁠” Gorshkov — who had a nightmare showing on Mirage that he will soon want to forget —, got his first and only kill as he went 1-23 in his lowest-rated map ever. After that misplay the Danes went back to dominating and closed out the map comfortably, 16-8.