Vitality join GamerLegion in BLAST.tv Paris Grand Finals
Team Vitality, the home town heroes, came into the semi-finals with every fan behind them. And with GamerLegion upsetting Heroic, It was Vitality at the tip of everyone’s tongue as the favourite to win the major.
Still, they had to beat Apeks first to earn the right to play in the finals. Apeks came to the Semis with a massive victory over Liquid. Their IGL kyxsan had taken the game by storm, exploiting every weakness in the North American armour to secure that victory. And Apeks had to hope the same aggression would pay off against a Vitality that looked beatable in their game with ITB.
The series started off on Apeks’ pick of Mirage. The Bees picked up a pistol-round win and converted it into a nearly flawless streak of 4. Even with guns out, Apeks needed 3 consecutive clutches in order to put 4 of their own on the board, courtesy of jL, jkaem and STYKO, respectively. The ultra-close half ended up with a 1 round lead for Vitality going into the second.
The second half started with Vitality getting the pistol round conversions to get to double digits quickly before Apeks’ defence put two on the board thanks to nawwk’s AWP. Deagles out for Vitality led to their 12th round as Apeks’ economy started to crumble.
Backs against the walls, Apeks showed what their Deagles could do as STYKO and jL combined for a 10th. The international squad kept going, putting round after round against all odds to nearly tie the game up, but Vitality managed to barely edge it out to get to match point. Despite Apeks putting up a relatively clean 14th, the Bees ended it in regulation with clean headshots across the board as dupreeh, Spinx and ZywOo all put up massive hauls.
Another pistol round went the way of Vitality, but Apeks answered with 4 massive frags as nawwk put up a monstrous set of rounds. Finally, ZywOo was barely able to put a stop to Apeks’ streak. Everyone was firing on all cylinders as Vitality closed the half out 10-5.
An absolutely essential pistol round came thanks to jkaem to help Apeks get their footing in the second round. And with jL and jkaem stepping up, the team was able to tie the score up at 10-10. Once the final piece of the Astralis puzzle, it was Magisk who let his rifle sing round after round to carry Vitality to a 13-10 lead. The AWP v AWP battle continued as nawwk got a massive clutch over ZywOo in round 24, keeping Apeks in the game. Still, Vitality persevered, with ZywOo and Spinx fittingly putting up the kills to take match point. And the Israeli superstar closed it out in the middle to take Vitality into the Major Finals.
After today's win, Vitality is destined to take this major and see ZywOo lift the major trophy in Paris. Tomorrow, they face GamerLegion in their final battle. The prodigal child of Counter-Strike is ready to close this chapter and bring us to CS2.
VitalityApeks| Vitality |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Lotan 'Spinx' Giladi |
51 - 35 | +16 | 94.9 | 81.0% | 1.45 |
 Mathieu 'ZywOo' Herbaut |
50 - 36 | +14 | 80.2 | 79.3% | 1.25 |
 Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen |
42 - 34 | +8 | 71.3 | 75.9% | 1.20 |
| Emil 'Magisk' Reif |
38 - 40 | -2 | 80.3 | 74.1% | 1.08 |
| Dan 'apEX' Madesclaire |
38 - 42 | -4 | 77.8 | 70.7% | 1.05 |
| Apeks |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Tim 'nawwk' Jonasson |
43 - 38 | +5 | 71.7 | 62.1% | 1.06 |
 Martin 'STYKO' Styk |
40 - 45 | -5 | 82.2 | 62.1% | 1.00 |
 Joakim 'jkaem' Myrbostad |
37 - 44 | -7 | 69.2 | 55.2% | 0.88 |
 Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius |
42 - 48 | -6 | 75.4 | 55.2% | 0.86 |
 Damjan 'kyxsan' Stoilkovski |
25 - 45 | -20 | 54.1 | 63.8% | 0.71 |
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