Terrifying on the Outside, boring on the inside

Woah! Sorry, didn’t see you there. Give us a second to get dressed and brush our teeth.

Our apologies. We’ve just woken up. It’s not our fault, we not only had to watch Outsiders, but we also had to think about watching Outsiders again. We’ve only just woken up.

Many people thought that without YEKINDAR, Outsiders would not only be much less impressive but also much more boring. Thankfully, they were wrong on both fronts. fame has come in and been almost as good.

That’s a huge compliment and pretty fair too. fame has been the standout on an Outsiders team that coasted into playoffs, and then fnatic.

They’re also exactly as boring as they ever were.

Boring or not, they’re damned effective. They slapped fnatic around with the three-headed hydra of FL1T, fame and Jame all impressing, and the disjointed firepower of fnatic had no answer for the structure of Outsiders.

At least the second semi was more exciting.

Some vintage HObbit gameplay saw Cloud9 waltz to victory on Inferno, and it really looked like C9 were just going to set up an all-CIS semi-final - and perhaps the first of two - until the choke took over.

With the pressure of the… well, less than packed crowd behind them, they crumbled. MOUZ smacked them around on Overpass, racing into a 14-5 lead. Though C9 brought it close, it only took a couple of errors for MOUZ to close it.

dexter picked up three kills on the AWP in a 2v3, and MOUZ broke C9 with pistols. Big, big errors.

But it’s fine. Cloud9 went up 5-0 on Ancient, with MOUZ grabbing a combined five kills in those five rounds. Cloud9 had stabilised, and now the pressure was back on MOUZ.

Who hit back with eight - yes, eight - T rounds in a row on Ancient. The map was unofficially over at that point.

With xertioN and frozen smushing the C9 offence, the game was over. MOUZ had toppled Cloud9.

Feels like nobody wants to win the bloody Major. Except Outsiders.