Falcons reach CS Asia playoffs after comeback vs M80

Falcons secured a playoff spot at the CS Asia Championship in China after rallying to defeat M80 in the group stage. The team earlier opened play with a 13-11 win over BC.Game and will have a rest day before the upper-bracket final.

On Inferno, Falcons fell behind 6-0 and later 7-1 before narrowing the gap. The map went to overtime, where Falcons swept the second set of OT rounds 4-0 to close the map.

On Ancient, M80 built an 8-4 lead at halftime after Josh “JBa” Barutt won the pistol and Elias “s1n” Stein contributed key rounds. Falcons reversed the CT half with five consecutive rounds to overturn an 8-11 deficit and take the map 13-11.

The two close wins followed the team’s debut with Finn “karrigan” Andersen in Astana. Falcons are working on a new defensive pairing on B site between captain karrigan and Maksim “kyousuke” Lukin, and had limited time to prepare between Astana and the CS Asia event.

Ilya “m0NESY” Osipov led Falcons statistically with a 52-26 K-D, 83.2 ADR and a 1.48 rating. Nikola “NiKo” Kovač posted a 40-33 K-D and a 1.25 rating. Kyousuke finished 42-40 with a 1.11 rating. Karrigan recorded a 30-39 line with a 0.84 rating. For M80, Michael “Swisher” Schmid was 37-42 with a 1.01 rating and Mason “Lake” Sanderson was 39-43 with a 0.97 rating.

Key moments in the match included a Falcons 3v5 round that helped trigger the comeback, an M80 low-buy round win, kyousuke’s four-kill round, m0NESY’s 1v2 clutch and a four-kill round from Fritz “slaxz-” Dietrich. Coach Danny “zonic” Sørensen and karrigan will use the rest day to prepare for the upper-bracket final.