Despite the fact that both players and сommunity are already tired of endless online tournaments, the European division of ESL Pro League S12 was very entertaining!
Let’s sum up the results of the biggest event of September in esports.
Astralis’ comeback
The best team of the event, but not yet top-1 of HLTV. Not the “Golden five” who won several Majors in a row, but still, Astralis have shown that they are ready to fight for victory in any tournament.
Despite the fact that many doubted the effectiveness of having a roster of more than 5 people, es3tag perfectly fit into the game of Astralis and showed a high level of play in EPL S12.
As for the Astralis team, we can note the will of the guys to win. Coming back from 0-2 in the final against Natus Vincere is worth a lot! Another thing that’s worth to mention is the strong Nuke from the Danes.
If you remember, there were times when Astralis played several dozen matches in a row on Nuke without defeats, and now Nuke Astralis is comparable in strength to that successful period.
Perhaps Xyp9x will return to the active roster, and in this case it is not very clear what to expect from the Danes in the upcoming tournaments and how much this will affect the game, but a victory at EPL S12 can give them such a powerful impulse that will help to suppress any opponent at the end of the year.
Na`Vi have shown decent and stable plays
Despite a VERY disappointing loss in the grand-final, we should applause to Na`Vi
Excluding the last three maps of the final, Na`Vi played incredibly well throughout the event.
Let’s drop the final match: it turns out that for the entire tournament Natus Vincere lost one match in the group stage and only one map in the playoffs.
Was it a weakness at the crucial moment? With the game that Astralis showed in the final, even the tongue does not turn to blame Natus Vincere for losing the final match.
The entire team plays well, no one drops out, and with Natus Vincere showing strong Counter-Strike in recent months, Na`Vi are turning into a very formidable opponent by the end of 2020.
There are some problems with mappool (more precisely, the issues are about lack of confidence on not the strongest maps), but it could be easily solved.
This Natus Vincere line-up has everything to finish the year in the top-3 of world rankings!
Group stage upset party
It was fun. The playoffs were not the teams that many expected to see. Let’s take a quick look at each of the teams that didn’t live up to expectations:
- GODSENT. Very… Strange performance. The team claimed to be a decent tier-1.5 team for a long time (both before Maikelele’s departure and after), but the EPL did not work out at all. 2 wins in the group stage and last place in their group. With all this, GODSENT tried very hard! There were many close matches in which GODSENT rained down at the crucial moment.
- G2 serious problems in recent months, not spared the trouble G2 and EPL S12. The patience of both the team and the organization is not infinite, and at this rate, we may soon see changes in the roster of the team.
- FaZe Clan. Oh, after five defeats right from the start of group B, it’s not even appropriate to take into account the two subsequent victories, because by that time FaZe Clan had already lost their chances of reaching the playoffs. A failed tournament and unclear perspectives for the team.
- Vitality и Fnatic. Here, the scale of the tragedy is almost absent. Yes, both teams did not pass to the playoff, which is unpleasant. Yes, upset. But in general, both teams pulled out 3 matches in the group, and the chances of reaching the playoffs were up to the last round. More or less the same can be said about OG.
Spirit keep improving
They have become much stronger! The team’s progress continues step by step.
Spirit are currently ranked 16th and can count on a place in the top-10 teams in the world if they continue to play as they did in the group stage of EPL S12.
Yes, the guys stumbled in the playoffs (even twice), but this does not change the fact that in the group stage they outplayed mousesports, Vitality, NiP and FaZe.
Sweet!
Ence are also fine!
If the progress of Spirit continues for a long time and is clearly visible, then ENCE, which gained a lot of problems after the departure of AleksiB, remained a little in the shadows.
But now ENCE is not the same team as it was a few months ago. The Finns have finally recovered from the loss of their captain and… now we just wondering what ENCE will show next?
What happened with BIG?
It’s better to ask what happened to BIG in the playoffs? After all, the Germans finished the group stage with a score of 5-2, it was quite confident. But in the playoffs… After beating Team Spirit, BIG lost to the Danes from Heroic and mousesports.
The first defeat was without chances, and the second – shhhhhh. Everything seemed to be fine, 1:1 in the match against mouz, a confident first half on Inferno with the score 9-6, and then…. And then BIG didn’t take a single round in defense and lost 9-16.
Let’s be honest, it sounds bad.
There is a chance that BIG are now slightly on slump, which can hit the team hard. Let’s hope that’s not the case.
Are mousesports fine?
Speaking of a slump, mousesports are slowly coming to life there. They had a very difficult group stage, where they snatched the playoff slot only in the last match.
Their coach was suspended mid event..
They have a new roster – EPL S12 is the first event for Bymas under mouz banners.
Despite on everything listed above, mouz finished 4th and narrowly missed out on Astralis in the final of the lower bracket.
It’s a real success for the current state of mousesports.
So many questions and thoughts… But the end of 2020 promises to be hot, so we will not be left without answers.
Stay tuned!
