Vitality beats GamerLegion 2-0 in Fort Worth; will face NAVI

Vitality swept GamerLegion 2-0 at BLAST Rivals Fort Worth, taking Mirage 13-1 and Overpass 16-14 in overtime to advance to a best-of-five grand final against Natus Vincere in Rotterdam on championship Sunday.

On Mirage, Vitality built an early lead and restricted GamerLegion to 17 kills in the first half and 21 total on the map, a record low for kills in a first half and map in a CS2 arena match. Mathieu ‘ZywOo’ Herbaut and Shahar ‘flameZ’ Shushan led Vitality’s scoring while Robin ‘ropz’ Kool and William ‘mezii’ Merriman provided support in trade situations. The map ended 13-1 in Vitality’s favor.

GamerLegion pushed back on Overpass. Milan ‘hypex’ Polowiec produced several multi-kills and clutch plays, and Janusz ‘Snax’ Pogorzelski with Oldřich ‘PR’ Nový helped erase a 5-10 deficit to put GamerLegion ahead 12-11. Vitality regained control after the side swap when flameZ won a 1v2 clutch. Two overtime rounds on the Terrorist side decided the map 16-14 for Vitality.

Individual statistics reflected match moments. ZywOo finished 42-21 with a 1.38 rating and flameZ was 33-28 with a 1.42 rating. Ropz went 34-24, mezii 32-25 and Dan ‘apEX’ Madesclaire 30-29. For GamerLegion, Snax was 32-34 with a 0.93 rating, PR 30-37 with a 0.90 rating and hypex 24-30 with a 0.89 rating.

Milan ‘hypex’ Polowiec had joked before the event that GamerLegion were here to stop Vitality and later commented, “I’m excited to see what Vitality are like [on stage].”

Vitality entered Fort Worth after winning the Grand Slam in Rio and had limited practice since that event. The team will meet Natus Vincere in Rotterdam for the BLAST Rivals Fort Worth grand final.