The group stage of IOS Pantamera has concluded after its fifteen matches. It's now down to only three teams to fight for the title
Click here for results, VODs and all the other information
Pantamera CS:GO tournament kicked off on schedule, but were quickly halted do to DDOS attacks. Unfortunately, we could witness this 'plague' ruining even a LAN event, it was mostly online matches who suffered by DDoS attacks. The tournament organizers gave out GOTV IPs to the public which may have been abused by the attackers. This caused a massive issues throughout the event.
After these networking issues were resolved, the tournament continued with a reworked schedule. The first three matches even brought us one upset, Titan managed to win over Fnatic, while NiP and EnVyUs started with the wins over LGB eSports and Virtus.pro, respectively.
In the second round of matches, Titan extended their lead at the standings by scoring another win over one of the main favorites in the tournament, Ninjas in Pyjamas. The French did it in a convincing fashion, scoring 16-8. In one of the best matches of the day, Fnatic rallied after their first match and won over the current top ranked team in the world, Team EnVyUs. The match was played on de_nuke and set the stage for a rather nice comeback due to its CT-favored balancing. EnVyUs had a lead at the end of the first half of 11-4 which in the end was enough for the Swedes to scrape by with an impressive CT side performance, winning 16-14. The third match of this round brought another upset. LGB eSports, a team which came through the qualifiers, totally shut down the Polish powerhouse, Virtus.pro. This was a second consecutive loss for the Poles on de_cache in this tournament, despite having excellent T halves in both matches.
The third round continued this wild turn of events. EnVyUs defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas in an intense match on de_cache, scoring 16-13. Virtus.pro was looking for their way out from the bottom of the standings in the match against Fnatic. They played on de_mirage, which is arguably the favorite map of both teams. The Poles had a strong CT side, finishing it 12-3. However, Fnatic rallied back and also had amazing defensive play, managing to bring the score all the way to a tie. The only unbeaten team at this point was Titan. Expectedly, they won their match against LGB eSports. LGB were flying high from their victory against Virtus.pro, but that wasn't enough to stop kennyS and apEX from getting their frags.
The next round of matches opened up with another draw. This time in the NiP vs. VP match on de_nuke. The first half time went into VP's favor 11-4. But when NiP took CT side, they quickly gained momentum and were quickly hacking away at VP's hopes in advancing. But on round 27, pasha and co. pulled out an amazing performance on a force buy round halting momentum at a 13-14 scorline. After this round they just rolled on to make it 14-14 and NiP's economy was pushed down to make them force buy with the pistols, one p90 and one Nova, NiP won that force buy, but the Poles responded to tie the match.
Titan haven't looked this good since they won DreamHack Stockholm last year. They took on EnVyUs, their fellow Frenchmen. The map was de_dust2, which made for a toss up, as both teams have a great aimers. The match started with an early lead for EnVyUs of 3-0, but Titan quickly responded with seven consecutive rounds making it 7-3, but in the end they failed to maintain the momentum as the half time score was 8-7 for them. However, the second half was dominated by Titan for 16-11 as the final score. We could see kennyS and apEX going absolutely ballistic with their fragging abilites once again. The closing match of this round was between Fnatic and LGB eSports. The Swedes promptly took a win and kept themselves in the race for the finals.
The closing round of the group stages brought the first loss for Titan. Virtus.pro didn't really have a great tournament overall, however, they still had a show of force by crushing the French 16-2 on de_cache. Despite this impressive performance, this was the last match for VP for the tournament as they didn't score high enough to advance to the next stage of the Pantamera. Team EnVyUs easily took another win on de_inferno against LGB eSports, 16-3 (12-3 at first half). This win secured to Team EnVyUs a ticket for the next stage of the tournament. The deciding match for both teams, NiP and Fnatic battled on de_inferno. Fnatic didn't really had a perfect first half where they in the end scored 10 rounds, but they kicked off the T side with a stellar pistol round. JW was the man who secured it in 1v2 situation and then they just snowballed through the second half, taking full control and winning the map. The end score was 16-9.
Titan will be heading over to the grand finals, where they will be waiting for the winner of Fnatic vs Team EnVyUs.
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