ENCE continued to smash all expectations by reaching the grand final of IEM Dallas, despite playing with a stand-in in place of their star player, convincingly beating FURIA 2-0.
This is the second time this year that a top-level tournament has seen a stand-in battle for the trophy, with FaZe winning IEM Katowice with Justin “jks” Savage in February.
FURIA were always going to struggle after they dropped their map pick of Vertigo, ENCE needing Pavle “Maden” Bošković to step up at the end of the map to drag his team to a narrow victory. Nuke was a one-sided affair, as was to be expected, with FURIA simply allowing ENCE too many T rounds.
It was a team effort on the fragging front for ENCE
Vertigo, the pick of FURIA, began with a flurry of four Terrorist rounds for the Brazilians, who seemed to come into the match a little warmer than their European counterparts. Once ENCE got on the board they took control of the map, getting the better of a combative and action-filled half, their economic superiority keeping FURIA on the backfoot throughout; FURIA found only one further round, the half ending 10-5 in favour of ENCE.
The frenzied nature of the map continued into the second half. FURIA won the pistol and went on to dominate the early part of the half, thanks to several huge holds from André “drop” Abreu and Kaike “KSCERATO” Cerato, getting to a 13-12 lead; a couple of huge plays at ramp from Maden brought the match back into the balance at 14-14. Down the stretch FURIA couldn’t regain control, and ENCE were able to haul themselves over the line 16-14.
Nuke was up next, and ENCE began with a T-sided pistol and clean conversion to go 3-0 up, leaving FURIA in a precarious position early in the map. Two huge clutches from Rafael “saffee” Costa on the lower bombsite seemed to give the Brazilians life, but a pacy upper hit from ENCE got the Europeans out to a 5-2 lead. FURIA managed to wrestle control of the map for a time, running up six rounds in a row to somewhat recover, but ENCE’s constant force-buying eventually paid off to get them to a 7-8 score.
Already facing an uphill battle, FURIA lost the pistol to a 1v2 clutch by Paweł “dycha” Dycha to leave them staring in the face of defeat. ENCE displayed their prowess on Nuke by allowing the Brazilians only a single round, storming into the grand final with a 16-8 victory. Janusz “Snax” Pogorzelski deserves immense credit for leading the scoreboard on this map.
