HEROIC won Stake Ranked Episode 3 on Saturday after beating K27 3-0 in the grand final to crown a dream debut event for the team after changing two players and a coach in the offseason.
HEROIC were among the winners of the offseason after landing Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin and Antonio “MartinezSa” Martinez to replace Yasin “xfl0ud” Koç and Simon “yxngstxr” Boije. The Norwegian organization also appointed a new head coach, handing the team’s keys to former academy coach Joonas “doto” Forss.
But it was the team’s longest-standing member, Linus “nilo” Bergman, who led the charge in Barcelona, averaging a 1.19 rating as HEROIC went undefeated in this eight-team double-elimination bracket.
“This is a more fitted team, so to speak,” IGL Christoffer “Chr1zN” Storgaard said after the match. “The roles fit, and that is going to do a lot. Everyone has been putting in an enormous amount of work with the short time we’ve had.
“Throughout this event, the mindset has been fantastic from everyone.”
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Brollan: “When HEROIC came with the offer, I think it was a really good fit for me, and that was what I basically needed: something refreshing”
The final day of the $100,000 competition began with K27 moving past Ninjas in Pyjamas in a three-map series to survive their fourth consecutive elimination match, having been sent to the lower bracket by the Ninjas on Wednesday. It was only the second international LAN for the young Russian side, who were without Timur “clax” Sabirov for this event and had to field Aleksandr “shalfey” Marenov as a stand-in.
The 3-0 scoreline doesn’t show how competitive K27 were in the final. They nearly took Mirage to overtime after coming back from 10-2 down and were close to taking the series to a fourth map but let an 11-7 lead slip on Dust2.
The win sees HEROIC move up ten places in the global VRS to 27th, offering a timely boost to Chr1zN’s troops ahead of a very busy week with matches in the closed qualifier for StarSeries Fall and BLAST Bounty.
