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OG dominate Group A of the BLAST Premier Fall 2020

OG are the champions of the BLAST Premier Fall 2020 Group A. The team took out Na’Vi and EG in their path to Group victory, with them missing out on facing NiP. The win advances them to the BLAST Premier Fall 2020 Finals in December.

How OG won

OG took the group by surprise as the team managed to take down Natus Vincere twice in the Group, once in the Upper Backer and once again in the Finals, and beat Evil Geniuses in the opening round.

The win against Evil Geniuses was quite the surprise, this is one of the only times a North American team has faced off against a European team all year long. Evil Geniuses was looking like the best team in North America for the majority of 2020. Although they have recently fallen off their pedestal as FURIA and the now-disbanded 100 Thieves roster stepped up and entered the last two Grand Finals of North American events.

The surprise here is that EG, even with them looking like the 3rd best NA team as it stands lost to one of Europe’s more beatable teams that exist in Tier 1 European CS:GO. The series went 2-1 to OG, with EG getting reverse swept after their opening win on Mirage 16-9. OG took Inferno 16-9 and Overpass 16-14.

OG came online on the final map precisely when they needed to

Moving on, OG faced Natus Vincere in the opening bracket. Surprisingly, OG got the win as they met the not so great version of Na’Vi. Mirage was a close opener with OG creeping in the 16-14 win, but OG took the reigns on Dust II and won 16-9.

The rematch in the Group A Grand Final was something else. Na’Vi got progressively stronger the more the tournament went on, especially after their long haul series against NiP in the Lower Bracket FInal earlier in the day. The likes of Na’Vi’s Denis “electronic” Sharipov and Egor “flamie” Vasilev woke up and the three pillars of Na’Vi’s fragging sides had come online. The momentum moving on from NiP to OG was scary, but OG was able to withstand.

The Final

There was a bit of a repeat in the opening of the Group A Grand Final. OG gave us a blast from the past with another 16-9 win on Dust II. However, Na’Vi had their own game plan on Mirage, and they won that 16-10. Both teams had somehow managed to take the win on the other team’s map pick, which made the decider on Nuke even more interesting.

While the last map was close, the scales began to tip in favour of OG by the half. Nuke is notoriously a CT sided map, but recent events have shown top teams are getting better at the T-side of Nuke. After losing the first four rounds of the map, OG managed to pull off seven straight wins on the T side. This is big momentum on Nuke, especially since the T’s won more rounds overall in the first half of the map. From there, OG had the advantage and managed to claim the map 16-12.

Just one of the many reasons why OG managed such a great T side

The biggest drawback for Na’Vi this series was the disappearance of both Flamie and Electronic in the final map. Electronic only scored a 0.72 rating, while Flamie fell to 0.88 ratings. The three pillars of Na’Vi had collapsed when it mattered the most, and Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostylie was not strong enough to keep the roof from falling down.

With the Nuke win, OG become the BLAST Premier Fall 2020 Group A Champions. Because OG and Na’Vi both made it to the Group A Final, they both head to the BLAST Premier Fall Finals on the 8th December. It was great seeing OG coordinate well with each other, with the likes of Mateusz “mantuu” Wilczewski having a great series with a 1.27 average rating across the three maps. The rest of the team on average scored between 0.98 to 1.09 ratings across all three maps, showing OG’s individual consistency throughout the entire series. It will be interesting to see where they go from here.

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