ENCE outlast FaZe in nail-biting semi-final
A modern day classic, ENCE versus FaZe. The battle of wits as two of the best IGLs in the scene go up against each other. Snappi with the rough diamonds, hand picked from coal mines, karrigan with his set of legends. Yet in recent matches, the rough diamonds have come out on top, with the Spanish sniper SunPayus being the dominant force in ENCE's victory from the group stage. But the semi-finals, the massive crowd, that is FaZe's home turf, especially so at Dallas with Twistzz being the only North American in the playoffs. With MOUZ in the finals, both teams would reckon themselves the favorite for the title if they can make it through. Can ENCE really shut FaZe down yet again, or will third time be the charm for the Grand Slam winners.
The match started with ENCE on the defence picking up the pistol round, which was immediately traded back by a FaZe force. And the veterans were off to the races, with rain and ropz competing for who gets to stay at the top of the scoreboard. ENCE managed to take a couple of close rounds, but FaZe came out on top with a 10-5 half with Antwerp MVP rain ending with 14 frags.
ENCE's pistol round win rate stayed at 100% in the second half, but once again they failed to convert as rain's five-seven stole away ENCE's chance at a comeback. The double-Rs continued to dominate and quickly stomped ENCE out of the map, combining for 48 kills between the two of them.
Moving to Anubis seemed to have reset ENCE's mind as this was the map they had routinely beaten FaZe on. They started with another pistol round win, and this time they converted it into a 3 round streak. FaZe's AKs answered back with a couple rounds back to back, but ENCE then went on a massive run thanks to NertZ and SunPayus stepping up massively from their map 1 woes. Snappi's squad went into the second half with a 11-4 lead, and then threw yet another pistol win on top for good measure to close the map out 16-6.
Anubis should've been a wake up call for ENCE's individuals, but the start of Ancient made it seem like they had hit the snooze button as SunPayus and NertZ started at the bottom of the scoreboard again. This time FaZe even took the pistol round and ran up a 7-1 tab on the attack. A massive dycha quad-kill gave ENCE the A bombsite and a second round. And SunPayus' AWP finally shook off some of the rust to put a few more on the board. 6 in a row went the way of Snappi as FaZe's money was constantly on the back foot. The half was barely edged out by karrigan and co. 8-7.
ENCE picked up their fifth pistol win of the series with NertZ stepping up massively for the conversion. In the gun round SunPayus used an M4A1-s to take 3 kills and give ENCE a two round lead. It was annihilation from the ENCE rifles to go 12-8, before ropz pulled out a massive round to give FaZe their first. A round without the AWP for broky led to the Latvian putting up a massive triple with the rifle to get FaZe a 11-13 score. And back to back 3v5 conversions equalized the map at 13-13. It looked almost over for ENCE, but made the Montenegrin rifler stole a round away singlehandedly to keep ENCE level at 14-14. SunPayus was the catalyst that led to ENCE getting match point, but karrigan showed his class, outcalling ENCE in the 30th round to force the match to overtime.
As is custom for OT, ENCE did what they couldn't in regulation by reaching 16 first. Maden's multi kill on A seemingly secured match point for ENCE, before broky hunted him down to clutch out the round tying FaZe up 17-17. The Latvian laser broke ENCE's back with magnificent AWP kills on A to deny the plant and lock in 18. But the back and forth continued as ENCE pushed to double OT.
Both AWPers wanted to take control of the game at 20-20 and ended up handing over kills to the opponents, but FaZe capitalized on the attack to get 21. But yet again, ENCE refused to let go of the match, pushing us to a third. Clutches from dycha and ropz, massive AWP frags, and once again Karrigan tied the game, to push us into another overtime.
The back and forth concluded in the fourth OT, as FaZe went flawless in their CT half, but ENCE ran it all the way back with SunPayus and dycha's impact on A to take us to a 5th. ropz's clutches were unstoppable, as he put another 1v2 up to push FaZe to 28-27. The never ending war kept going back and forth, neither team able to vanquish the other. But finally ENCE closed it out at 31-28 thanks to SunPayus' incredible AWPing.
ENCE will now face Dexter's MOUZ in the Grand Finals of IEM Dallas to hopefully secure their first trophy with this roster.
ENCEFaZe| ENCE |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Pavle 'Maden' Bošković |
78 - 68 | +10 | 85.2 | 69.5% | 1.11 |
 Guy 'NertZ' Iluz |
68 - 65 | +3 | 70.4 | 71.4% | 1.07 |
 Álvaro 'SunPayus' García |
74 - 63 | +11 | 71.2 | 64.8% | 1.06 |
 Marco 'Snappi' Pfeiffer |
68 - 63 | +5 | 69.8 | 75.2% | 1.03 |
 Paweł 'dycha' Dycha |
62 - 69 | -7 | 70.8 | 64.8% | 0.94 |
| FaZe |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Håvard 'rain' Nygaard |
82 - 74 | +8 | 88.8 | 68.6% | 1.21 |
 Robin 'ropz' Kool |
81 - 58 | +23 | 73.0 | 73.3% | 1.19 |
 Russel 'Twistzz' Van Dulken |
59 - 70 | -11 | 68.4 | 72.4% | 0.98 |
 Helvijs 'broky' Saukants |
67 - 73 | -6 | 66.7 | 63.8% | 0.96 |
| Finn 'karrigan' Andersen |
38 - 75 | -37 | 52.6 | 58.1% | 0.66 |
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