Here is the wrap up for group A at DreamHack Winter featuring Fnatic, Cloud9, HellRaisers and Bravado.
Group A started off with the match Fnatic versus Bravado. Not very surprisingly all eyes were on the Swedes, after the recent cheat accusations against their players Robin 'flusha' Rönnquist and Olof 'olofmeister' Kajbjer. But they proved everyone to be wrong at least for now, by outclassing the South-Africans on their first major LAN event with 16:2.
The second matchup of group A featured Cloud9 and HellRaisers, who haven't even faced off each other once before. While it seemed Cloud9 secured themselves a small advantage by starting CT on de_inferno, it turned out to be a terrible performance by the Americans on the CT favoured map. HellRaisers just easily past Cloud9 with a 13:2 score and only needed to calmly take home their 16:5 victory to advance to the Upper Bracket final, where they had to play Fnatic.
Thanks to the tight time schedule the players had no time to rest and so it was HellRaisers versus Fnatic up next and the game proved to be as promising as it looked on the paper. HellRaisers started as T and immediately won the pistol round, but Fnatic recovered very quickly and won round by round making it 11:4 at halftime. Once again it was HellRaisers sewing the pistol round up and the air started to become thinner for Fnatic as they needed to react thereafter, which they did with small comeback. Ever since that moment the match became an open confrontation between both parties and when it was 14:13 in Fnatic's favour the game once again turned around. The 14:14 was literally the Swedes deathblow as they were forced into an ECO, putting them under pressure at the score of 14:15. In the last round it was once again 17 year old Alexander 's1mple' Kostylev who made the difference today, securing his team their spot in the playoffs.
Dosia and his team caused the first huge upset in the tournament
In the other game Cloud9 was confronted with Bravado Gaming. And the South-Africans just got another CS:GO lesson and lived through a small déjà vu. This time it came even worse for them than in the first match versus Fnatic. Cloud9 didn't even seem to need to play their A game, but still won the CT side with an astonishing 15:0 score. At this point it couldn't get any worse for Bravado Gaming and with nothing to lose they won the pistol round, but immeditately lost the following round, flying home with only three rounds in total. Surely they have won a lot of experience and this definitely means a lot to them.
The final match for the last remaining spot in the playoffs put Fnatic up against Cloud9 on de'dust2, where the latter started off as Terrorists. The ECO round was quickly won by Fnatic, thanks to Jasper 'JW' Wecksell, who landed two beautiful headshots. The sixth round then marked the first scoreboard entry for Cloud9. Eventhough losing a 2on2 situation, the bomb was ticking away too fast for Freddy 'KRiMZ' Johansson. Subsequently Fnatic only let them win two more rounds and switched sides with a 12:3 advantage. With the Swedes winning the pistol round once again, Cloud9's resistance seemed to be broken, but Spencer 'hiko' Martin let spark some hope by hitting some beatiful scout shots, only to get cleaned up by JW in 3on1 situation making it 15:3. In the end Fnatic secured themselves a ticket to the playoffs, eventhough they had to work harder for it than they probably expected.
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