HLTV reckoned Astralis were the 4th best team in the world.
ENCE disagreed. They're merely the 4th best team in Group bloody A.
Yeah, you read that right. Well, maybe you didn't, but we did write it... right. Astralis finished in fourth place, and missed out on playoffs - which is still weird to say, even though realistically it's the walking corpse of the great team that once represented that org.
With playoffs on the line, Astralis were 2-0'd by Heroic in a scoreline that really underlines quite how far ahead Heroic are in Denmark. Of course, that result barely mattered, as by clapping Bad News Bears, ENCE were essentially confirmed in the playoffs.
The story of Group B so far is... well, we don't want to spoil that, though you probably saw it in the title. Instead, we want to talk about forZe. Consecutive 2-1 wins over Complexity and Virtus.pro are stellar results for the Russians.
Okay, Col had a stand-in with NaToSaphiX, but it's nice to see tier 1 teams beaten when they have a stand-in in a way - we don't want Col to be able to coast without k0nfig against the tier 2. It was zorte (who has a suspiciously 'coach-like' name, in our opinion) who grabbed the spotlight in both games - and seems to have come out of nowhere.
New tournament, new era, new Russian player who is amazing that you'd never heard of. What the hell do they feed them over there?
Other than Complexity players, obviously.