Photo Credit: HLTV
When the lights returned and the confetti started raining down on the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, it was CyberPowerPC’s own Luminosity Gaming that stood victorious. Luminosity will be taking home a prize of $500,000 and “Legends” status as their prize for finishing in the tournament as the winners. This also marks the first time a team outside of Europe has won the major championships.
Photo Credit: HLTV
Group Stages
Luminosity were the second seed in their group, Group A, along with Ninjas in Pyjamas, mousesports, and Flipsid3 Tactics. Still, the Brazilians were favored to come out of their group in first place because the seeding was due to placings at the previous major. In addition the first seed, NiP, were unfortunately missing one of their regular starters, pyth, due to visa issues. Luminosity’s first game was against the strongest German team, mousesports. Luminosity had a strong CT half, finishing 10-5 up. Mousesports showed signs of life with a strong CT half of their own, but was unable to overcome the deficit and Luminosity took the close game 16-13. The second game was against the top seed NiP and the first 10 rounds were a grueling battle of endurance. Rounds were traded back and forth until Luminosity managed to break away after 5-5. The Brazilians dominated the next 11 rounds and managed to shut out NiP for the rest of the match to finish 16-5.
In the other groups, there were numerous upsets going on, with several favorites falling to underdogs. The previous major winner, EnVyUs, were shown the door after losing both of their group stage matches to Counter Logic Gaming and Gambit Gaming. CLG took second in that group behind Astralis. Fnatic fell to Liquid in the winner’s match of their group but still managed to grab the second seed in that group. In the last group, Natus Vincere easily took first place with Virtus Pro having to struggle to come in second.
Photo Credit: HLTV
Quarterfinals
The quarterfinals were the first match to be played in the Nationwide Arena. Luminosity faced Virtus Pro in their quarterfinals match. Virtus Pro started out strong on the first match in the Best of Three series with a 10-5 T-side half on de_cache. Luminosity answered back with a streak of their own, breaking through the VP defense numerous times. However, VP managed to string some CT rounds at the very end of the second half to take the map into overtime. Big plays by VP’s veteran player Neo would allow the Poles to take map 1, 19-17. Luminosity was in control of the next two maps from the start to the finish. With a strong 11 round start on the first half of de_cobblestone, the Brazilians cleaned up the map 16-10. The next map, de_overpass, would proceed the same way with Luminosity taking 12 rounds on the un-favored T-side and ending with a score of 16-11.
In the other 3 quarterfinals matches, Na’Vi’s win over NiP would be the only quick match. Liquid vs CLG was a thriller to watch especially with at least one of the two American teams guaranteed to go to the semifinals, something that has not happened since the first CS:GO major. CLG had a huge lead in the first map, but Liquid completed a huge comeback to win it. In the second map, CLG were demoralized from their close loss on the previous map and put up a lackluster resistance resulting in Liquid moving on to the semifinals. The result of Astralis vs Fnatic was something of a shock. Going into the tournament, Fnatic had been on a 6 tournament winning streak and were the favorites to win the entire tournament. Their loss in the group stages to Liquid was something of a shock, but they also fell to Astralis, and were therefore eliminated from the tournament. Fnatic had beat Astralis on the last few occasions the two teams met, so the 2-0 sweep by Astralis was surprising.
Photo Credit: HLTV
Semifinals
Undoubtedly, Luminosity had the easier opponent in the semifinal with them going up against Liquid who were ranked at the time, 18th in the world as compared to the other semifinal match between Na’Vi, ranked 2nd, versus Astralis, ranked 3rd . The match did not turn out that way with both maps going into overtime. On the first map, the Brazilian team managed to win the half as the Terrorists 8-7, but Liquid came roaring into the second half with a strong T-side of their own to grab 6 match points at 15-9. In the 25th round of the game, coldzera from Luminosity hit an insane 4 kills with the AWP with two of those kills being a jumping collateral shot on the B site. That round was all the Brazilians needed to build up their own momentum, and they proceeded to take the next 10 rounds to win the match in overtime 19-15. The second match would proceed in a similar fashion with Liquid taking the first half 9-6 and driving their advantage all the way up to 15-6. Luminosity’s TACO decided to buy the auto-sniper and held down the A-site to bring his team all the way back to 15-15. In overtime, Liquid would grab 1 round to Luminosity’s 2 on the first half. However, quick back-to-back rounds from Luminosity would clinch the match for them in an exciting series.
The other semifinals match was between two closely ranked teams. The first map, de_inferno, looked to be going in Astralis’ favor with Na’Vi on a bad buy at 14-14. However, a misplay by Astralis’ star player, device, allowed Na’Vi to take match point which they closed out the next round. Na’Vi began with a massive lead on the next map, de_dust2, taking the first 8 rounds. Astalis showed signs of life with 3 rounds of their own coming from the AWP of cajunb. However, the next round saw the same player making a huge mistake, allowing Edward from Na’Vi to shoot him at 1 second instead of hiding to give Na’Vi the round. The map quickly ended at that point with Na’Vi winning 16-5 to meet Luminosity in the grand finals.
Photo Credit: HLTV
All-Stars Match
The all-stars match was conducted between Europe and the Americas with fan favorites from both regions taking on each other. For Team America, s1mple, Hiko, shroud, Skadoodle, and tarik were chosen. For Team Europe, GeT_RiGhT, Niko, kennyS, rain, and Maikelele were chosen. The game was played on de_nuke, a map that had been revamped by Valve recently. The match saw a fun exhibition of skill and hilarious plays with several taser and knife kills happening. The score ended up to be 22-19 for Team America with s1mple closing out the map with a double knife kill to the delight of the audience. The full match statistics and details can be found here.
Photo Credit: HLTV
Grand Finals
Luminosity and Na’Vi has turned into one of the closest matchup in recent Counter-Strike history. According to lurppis, a long-time analyst in CS, the match-up has seen 332 total rounds played between the two teams with 166 rounds won by each team. The two teams have seen some of the closest games played with many of their previous matches going into overtime or ending 16-14 or 16-13. The first map was shaping up to continue this legacy as the match was decided in overtime. Na’Vi took a strong 11-4 as the CTs, but Luminosity mounted a comeback to take the map into overtime. The first 2 rounds of overtime were traded, but the third round saw Edward from Na’Vi clutch a huge 1 vs 3 to give Na’Vi the advantage going into the second half of overtime. It was all for naught, as Luminosity rolled through the defense to pick up a perfect Terrorist side in overtime to win the map 19-17. The next map was all Luminosity. The Brazilians started the map with 3 kills from star player, coldzera, and continued the momentum to take a 7-0 lead. Na’Vi would answer back with 2 rounds of their own, but were shut down for the rest of the half due to the efforts of Fallen, the captain and in-game leader of Luminosity. A pistol round win in the second half for Luminosity allowed them to take the economic advantage which they held on for the rest of the map, taking 3 quick rounds to secure their first ever major championship. This marks the first time a team outside of Europe has managed to win the major.
Photo Credit: HLTV
MVP
The MVP of the match and winner of the HyperX MVP trophy was Luminosity’s coldzera. He managed to sustain a 52-29 kill-to-death ratio throughout the two games and performed admirably throughout the whole tournament. His amazing 4 kills versus Liquid could arguably have been the play that allowed his team to begin the comeback and even make it to the grand finals. It is worth noting however, that Fallen was not far behind his star player, posting a 1.32 rating and a 47-26 kill-to-death difference himself. Fer from Luminosity also performed well with 51 kills and 39 deaths in the series. The full match statistics and vods can be found on HLTV.