Astralis Crowned Champions of IEM Katowice
Image credit: ESL
Astralis defeated Faze Clan with a dominant performance winning the grand finals of IEM Katowice XI World Champions series with a 3-1 score of the best of 5 series and an amount of $104,000 for first place
Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth won the tournament MVP award with a 1.12 HLTV rating averaged across the four maps.
With the addition of Nikola “Niko” Kovač to Faze clan, the new team put up a strong fight against Astralis. The map for the match were Cache, Overpass, Nuke, Inferno after the draft.
Cache Astralis-9 Faze-16
The Grand Finals started with Cache Astralis won the pistol round but lost the 2nd round with the Ump-45 against Tec-9 of Faze clan. from there Faze drew a considerable lead of 10-5 in the first half.
Though in the second half Astralis made a comeback and brought the score to 10-8 but with an amazing play from Karrigan in a 3v1 situation broke the streak and from there they sailed through the rest of round and Faze won the map with a score of 16-9.
Overpass Astralis-16 Faze-12
The second map of the series was Overpass Astralis opened the map winning the pistol round during the first half of overpass both teams were equally matched with the score going back and forth. the first half ended with 9-6 in favor of Faze.
in second half Astralis once again won the pistol round but were still running behind Faze in scores but everything changed with a well needed Deagle Ace from Dupreeh in the 22nd round of the map. filled with high morale Astralis took rest of the rounds and won the map with 16-12.
Nuke Astralis-16 Faze-12
The third map moved on to Nuke and Astralis were calmer and collected than ever with first half going in their favor with 10-5. in the second half, Faze won their first pistol round of the series and managed to bag more rounds bringing the round deficit to just 2. but Astralis showing a well-coordinated play in the 20th round of map rolled over Faze with Deagle and Tec-9.
Despite this Faze slowly brought the round to 14-12 with just 2 more round to tie up with Astralis. but once again Dupreeh stepping up his game clutched the round in a 3v1 situation and destroying faze economy from there they couldn’t take any more rounds and the map ended with 16-12 score in favor of Astralis.
Inferno Astalis-16 Faze-13
The fourth map of the series was inferno and the closest map of the series Faze opened the map winning the pistol round but Astralis quickly took 5 consecutive round both teams were on equal grounds and rounds went back and forth and faze finished the first half with a 9-6 score.
in second half Faze opened the half with a blast with Karrigan taking 4 kills and winning the pistol round. the rest rounds were the most intense of the series with Astralis closing the gap and then leading 13-11 but after a timeout from Faze they bagged up the rounds and score went to 13-13. the final time out of the series came from Astralis after the timeout they just ran over Faze. Faze could only get 3 kills in the last 3 rounds and Astralis closed the map winning it with a score of 16-13
Astralis winning the tourament was no suprise after their perfomance in Eleague major and crushing team like Navi they became the favourite to win the tourament.