After a week of action BLAST’s low-stake (but higher than last year’s) curtain raiser is complete.

And, with the double brackets of each groups complete, it acutally ended roughly as we expected.

Virtus.pro and NAVI — after beating G2 twice, taking Aleksib’s international record against former teams to 18-3 — won their groups with relative ease to secure Spring Final spots, while world No. 1 and 2, Vitality and FaZe, completed lower bracket runs.

FaZe earned the spot over Twistzz’s Liquid to put that embarrassing loss to GamerLegion behind them, even overcoming a classic cadiaN clutch to do so.

Vitality had it harder. apEX and company, after Astralis shocked them in the upper bracket final, dropped down low to cut Magisk’s Falcons down to size to set up a rematch against the Danes in the group final.

Astralis are more of a firepower team than a tactical one these days, and are finally contenders again, but in a brawl we’d always choose to be on ZywOo’s team.

And, so it proved, as 2023’s best player dropped a 1.50 rating while Vitality withstood two Astralis comebacks (from 4-9 to a win on map one, and from 4-11 to overtime on map two) to book mezii a ticket to a home event in London’s Spring Final.

With the groups completed, we then went to the play-in stage, two shootouts for two final spots at London.

Astralis, after coming so close vs Vitality, expected a quick win vs Major-less BIG but the Germans turned up with an ally for OT in map three: jabbi’s mouse.

Yet, somehow, that absolute tilter of a round had little impact as Astralis survived a scare for a 2-1 win.

One spot was left, with a heayweight clash between G2 and Liquid.

NiKo, after a 1-11 K-D and 0.03 T side against NAVI yesterday, was in the crosshairs but turned up to spank Liquid around on Anubis.

G2 have an uphill battle against the endless mob of jks stans, but outperforming the highly-rated Liquid lineup is a good start. Get NiKo into aim_botz, and who knows what TaZ, HooXi and nexa can cook?