Astralis have locked in a spot at the BLAST Bounty Season 2 Finals after a 2-1 victory (13-1 Cache, 7-13 Nuke, 13-10 Ancient) over HOTU in the online stage.
It was a revenge win for Rasmus "HooXi" Nielsen's troops, who had lost on both of the maps they won in this series when they played HOTU in the StarLadder StarSeries Fall Europe qualifier on Wednesday.
It will be Filip "NEO" Kubski's LAN debut for the Danish organization after he joined as the team's skipper during the off-season, and he'll have precious little time to improve Astralis' form in what was still a shaky run through Bounty's online stage.
The team had barely beaten Nemesis in their opener and struggled on their Nuke pick in this series, but have a strong showing from Jakob "jabbi" Nygaard and a key 1v3 clutch by Love "phzy" Smidebrant on the Ancient decider to thank for earning a LAN berth to kick off the season.
Astralis were utterly dominant to start the series, romping to a 13-1 victory on HOTU's Cache pick as jabbi tallied the second-highest-rated map of his career (2.52) and Victor "Staehr" Staehr paired off with him (1.92 rating) in a masterclass CT side.
Aleksandr "dwushka" Pakhnevich, who was 0-8 on Cache during that run, came alive on Nuke to even the score. Astralis were lost in nearly every avenue of approach, finding their Outside defaults picked apart and their Upper pops thwarted in what became a 9-3 half for HOTU. A pistol win and reply to HOTU's first gun round helped close the deficit after the break, but back-to-back multi-kills from David "n0rb3r7" Danielyan stopped the map from slipping out of his team's grasp.
Clutches defined Ancient, which was more contentious than the prior maps from the outset. HOTU went up 5-0 off the back of a 1v3 clutch that Mohan "launders" Govindasamy, mere moments before the first kill, gave a "0% chance" of happening.
Astralis' fortunes went from bad to worse after their first two wins, one of which came in a 2v5, were replied to by a force-buy from HOTU and a narrow round win that saw Aidos "kade0" Khairzhan stick a defuse to convert a 1v2, but a 1v3 from phzy the round after became the defining moment of the series. That helped Astralis close the gap by the break, and a pistol win gave them the margin they needed to recover from a few early rounds in the second half from HOTU, with jabbi powering his team to another win with nine multi-kills and a 26-16 K-D.
Aidos 'kade0' Khairzhan
Victor 'Staehr' Staehr
Rasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen
David 'n0rb3r7' Danielyan
Jakob 'jabbi' Nygaard
Astralis
Rasmus 'HooXi' Nielsen
Love 'phzy' Smidebrant
Jakob 'jabbi' Nygaard
Victor 'Staehr' Staehr
Gytis 'ryu' Glušauskas
Filip 'NEO' Kubski
Filip 'NEO' Kubski
Love 'phzy' Smidebrant
Aleksandr 'dwushka' Pakhnevich
Mohan 'launders' Govindasamy
Nemesis
Ivan 'SELLTER' Miroshnikov
Evgeny 'r3salt' Frolov
Alemkhan 'mag1k3Y' Moldakamalov
Philipp 'tex1y' Moskvitin
Daniil 'Sdaim' Tupov
Maksim 'NMV' Naumov
HOTU
David 'n0rb3r7' Danielyan
Aidos 'kade0' Khairzhan
Dmitry 'mizu' Kondratev
Aleksandr 'dwushka' Pakhnevich
Kim 'frontales' Argunov
Rustem 'mou' Telepov