Vitality have sealed a playoffs berth at BLAST Rivals Season 2 after beating Falcons 13-10 on Anubis and Dust2.
It was the same two maps as the teams faced off on at ESL Pro League Season 24, where Falcons had won Anubis before losing Dust2 and Mirage. This time, Inferno was left as the decider, but it wasn’t needed as Vitality made an emphatic return with Dan “apEX” Madesclaire and shut down an excellent opening map from Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov.
Falcons will now face Legacy in the lower bracket of Group A in hopes of making the playoffs in Hong Kong, where they reached the final last year only to lose in an intense five-map series to FURIA.
Vitality dominated the opening portions of Anubis with apEX and William “mezii” Merriman holding strong on B, but their lead dissipated against a red-hot showing from m0NESY. Openings from The Flash helped Falcons win four of their five rounds in what could have been a much better half had they not lost to pistols, and they were left facing a mountain to climb after the swap after Vitality won the pistol to lead 10-5.
m0NESY’s superb map continued on the CT side, but he was the only one finding consistent impact as Falcons relied heavily on him to claw back into the map. It wasn’t enough to get the job done in the end, though, with a triple from Robin “ropz” Kool helping Vitality regain control at 10-10 and close out the map.
Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut, after taking a backseat on Anubis, showed up at the start of Dust2. He led Vitality’s flawless 5-0 start, but a pivot to repeatedly executing B ended up costly as Falcons held strong in back-to-back-to-back rounds.
That swung momentum in Falcons’ favor as they swept the remainder of the half, but Vitality came roaring back after the swap. Proactive defensive setups and constant barrages of nades, paired with multi-fragging by ZywOo and ropz, shut Falcons’ defaults down, and a miracle blind spraydown by ropz added insult to injury as Vitality romped to victory.
