After a tour around Inferno, Overpass & Dust2. Astralis took down Liquid 3-0 in the best of five grand final.
The one sided battle saw Liquid struggle to pick up pace on either of the 3 maps, and after a disappointing year for Astralis in their performances, they finally pulled a spectacular victory to end the year.
Starting on Inferno, Astralis played it slow on the pistol round, causing Liquid to misread the situation and rotate away from the target, giving the pistol round to Astralis easily, With the advantage lost immediately when Liquid came back with a limited pistol buy, smashing through Astralis' first gun round. The first map continued this style of back and forth for some time, although Astralis quickly got into the lead and rarely gave it up. After 6-7 to Astralis, they took the lead and didn't give it up again, sweeping to the 16-11 victory, with device easily being the star player, with his lighting reaction times coming back time and time again throughout Inferno to pull Astralis through bad situations. NAF had some great plays for Liquid, but was all too often hammered into place by device and/or dupreeh.
Catching a plane from Italy to Germany, or at least, the CSGO maps based upon there, we move to Overpass. Where both teams struggled on the T side, but pulled out the scoring on the CT side. Astralis pulling out 13 of their 16 on CT first, giving Liquid just 2 rounds, at one point Astralis had powerhoused themselves 10-1 before Liquid got in a second round. After half time though, Liquid got into gear and threw out a fairly painless 9 rounds, although they just couldn't recover from their poor T side, and gave Astralis just the 3 rounds needed on the T side for their second map, for another 16-11 to Astralis. Once again device, aided by dupreeh many times tore through the maps middle, throwing out just short of 65 kills between them.
Heading over to sunny Dust2. The first half proved fruitful for both, ending 8:7 in favour of Astralis. The map went to 8-12 before Liquid entirely lost the grip on the chance of a win here. device once again finding his mojo, pulling out an ace despite being in a molotov fire pit in an impressive showing on the final hurdles towards the 3-0 victory for Astralis. Ending overpass on 16-10. Liquid must have felt like they could take the victory here, with the halfway point being a level 8:7 slightly nudging towards Astralis. In the second half though, Astralis nailed their CT side, giving Liquid just 3 more round wins, taking another 8 for themselves to give them the 16 needed to win the map and the tournament!
Astralis take home the $200,000 jackpot, with Liquid taking half that for 2nd place.
High tier CSGO matches will now pause for some time, with the players winter break now in action, from 21st December to January 17th. The first high tier event of 2020 will start a day after the break ends, with BLAST Premier Global Finals taking place on January 18th to January 24th.
