After almost two weeks of intense CS:GO competition, Astralis was named the champion of the StarLadder Berlin Major 2019. This means that Astralis gets to take home $500,000 along with a direct invite to the new Legends stage of the CS:GO Major Championship in Spring of next year.
However it's not all about the prize pool as winning this Major Tournament also meant that Astralis has cemented its place in CS:GO history. Astralis is the only team so far to win four Majors, with three of those being back-to-back.
The team is composed of Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen, Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander, and Emil "Magisk" Reif. The team won ELEAUGE Atlanta in 2017 and after that FACEIT Major: London 2018. They also won the Intel Extreme Masters XIII - Katowice Major 2019.
In this recently held tournament, Astralis entered as one of the Current Legends. During the New Legends stage of the competition, Astralis ended at the third spot, winning three matches with one loss. This allowed Astralis to get a set at the New Champions Stage. Here the team dominated its opponents.
Its first match was against Liquid. The team had a convincing win in the first round with the Vertigo map, and secured a second win during the second round with the Overpass map. This allowed them to make it to the next stage against NRG Esports. Astralis dominated the game, taking the Train map in the first round and Overpass in the second.
The Grand Finals
This all led to a Grand Finals match against AVANGAR. The story was pretty much the same with the previous matches. In the first game, Astralis picked Inferno and just ran with it. On the first set, Astralis won eight consecutive rounds. AVANGAR managed to get three wins before Astralis ended the set with 12 wins. On the second set, AVANGAR on the Terrorist side managed to win the pistol round. However, it was pretty much all Astralis after that, closing the match at 16-6.
In the second game, AVANGAR went for Dust II. Again, AVANGAR won the pistol round and the next rounds after. However, Astralis managed to find its footing and eventually won the following rounds. AVANGAR did what it could, but Astralis closed the set at 11-4. By the second set, AVANGAR managed to squeeze in one win before Astralis ended the match at 16-5.
The next event is ESL One: New York 2019, which is scheduled for later this month. At this tournament, we get to see if we are truly entering the age of Astralis for CS:GO.
