MOUZ move to IEM Dallas Semi-Finals over Astralis

MOUZ's run through to the playoffs of IEM Dallas was a set of middling results as they took a beating from Heroic but defeated the shaky rosters of FURIA, Fnatic and OG to qualify. Meanwhile, Astralis, powered by the legendary device AWP, took down Cloud9 and Liquid and pushed ENCE to the limits. Historically, MOUZ would be favoured, but with device on an MVP level performance, can they take the Danes down?

The match started on Inferno, with Astralis picking up the pistol round win on the defence. Flawless conversions put Astralis up at 4-1, and with device starting off strong, the team got a quick 7-1 lead. Finally, device was eliminated in round 9 to give MOUZ a second win. The win gave MOUZ a bounce back into the half, but Astralis still closed out with a 9-6 lead. MOUZ took the pistol thanks to a JDC 1v2 and converted it into a 10-9 lead before device singlehandedly stole one back.

Source: ESL

The game continued back and forth, with neither team able to get back-to-back rounds till Astralis put a set together to get to 15. MOUZ were not ready to give up so quickly and pushed it to overtime, where dexter took over to steal the map away 22-20.

Source: ESL

Their own map pick secured, MOUZ moved into Ancient with confidence. Astralis picked up another pistol win, but JDC was the hero of the second to deny Astralis back-to-back rounds. MOUZ took that momentum to run up to a 5-2 lead. And sparsely spread rounds for Astralis couldn't break the international squad's momentum as MOUZ put up a 10-5 half, with the German rifler JDC being a star performer. Yet another pistol round for Astralis led to a Danish return on the defence as they won 4 of the first 5 rounds. Back-to-back rounds from the academy trio of xertioN, torzsi and JDC put their team on 14-9. No defence put up from Astralis as MOUZ shut them down, with torzsi's AWP finding the final frags to close the series out.

MOUZ will now face the ultimate test going up in a rematch against Heroic. The stronger Danes have been the most consistent team of 2023 but have a tendency to fail under pressure. Can MOUZ turn the screws on cadiaN and Co. and make the finals?

IEM Dallas 2023

Bo3

Astralis

0 - 2

MOUZ

All maps

Astralis	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Nicolai 'device' Reedtz	55 - 43	+12	79.8	76.1%	1.30
Benjamin 'blameF' Bremer	45 - 43	+2	69.1	74.6%	1.04
Alexander 'Altekz' Givskov	45 - 49	-4	78.9	62.7%	0.91
Christian 'Buzz' Andersen	31 - 46	-15	61.4	62.7%	0.77
Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossander	22 - 48	-26	45.0	52.2%	0.56

MOUZ	K - D	+/-	ADR	KAST	Rating 2.0
Ádám 'torzsi' Torzsás	45 - 33	+12	71.8	76.1%	1.17
Jon 'JDC' de Castro	51 - 42	+9	79.5	67.2%	1.15
Christopher 'dexter' Nong	44 - 43	+1	75.7	64.2%	1.09
David 'frozen' Čerňanský	39 - 35	+4	71.2	79.1%	1.08
Dorian 'xertioN' Berman	47 - 45	+2	74.1	67.2%	1.00