Immortals defeated North 2-1 (16-14 Cache, 15-19 Overpass, 16-6 Cobblestone) to move on to the semi-final at IEM Katowice 2017.

The series between Immortals and North started on the former's map pick, Cache. Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen's team famously didn't feel at home on the map, and that was evident on their CT side as the Brazilians tore through their defenses round after round.

It started with a pistol round win for Immortals who held against the retake-on-A setup that North decided to play and continued with Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles destroying the opposition with the AWP they could afford early on. In the fifth round, the Brazilian sniper picked up a quad kill to unlock the A site as Immortals took a 6-0 lead. Shortly after that, Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif finally got on the scoreboard by grabbing two kills from the forklift that allowed North to get their first round, making it 7-1, but the Danes couldn't string rounds together and were promptly reset.

The first half was out of North's control at that point as their aggression was stopped early on and their defensive play was picked apart by good Terrorist-side executes.

After the switch North picked up the Terrorist pistol round, lost the following anti-force-buy to Lucas "⁠steel⁠" Lopes CZ-75 three kills on A, but managed to bounce back in the following round using Deagles on their own force buy. Down 4-14 at that point, it still looked very bad for Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke and co. However, the Danish team slowly ground back rounds as Immortals decided to go for the long game and conservative buys, but it wasn't paying off. After some close rounds, most notably the 22nd one in which MSL got four kills on B, the match was tied 14-14.

It took HEN1 to wake up and get an entry with the AWP combined with some smart play on B to finally get the Brazilians to match point—and they closed it out in the following one to make it 16-14 and go 1-0 up in the series.



Immortals closed out Cache after a good comeback attempt from North

Overpass started well for North who followed up their 3-0 lead with some fast gun rounds to get six rounds on the board before the Brazilian side could reply with a mixed buy round win. After getting their first Immortals stabilized, and their CT side aggression finally started to pay off. HEN1 started the eighth round with an AWP double kill towards long A and his team shut down the Danes from that point onwards, winning nine rounds in a row on the CT side to make it 9-6 for the first half.

MSL managed an incredible 1v3 clutch on the A site retake to win North the CT pistol round while the early gun rounds went the way of the Terrorists, ensuring the lead stayed with Immortals in the second half. As the score was 11-9, the Danish teams decided to go for aggression towards the playground and mid but it didn't pay off as the teams traded evenly and Immortals clutched the late round situation.

As Ricardo "⁠boltz⁠" Prass and co. came closer to closing out the second map North won two crucial low-buy rounds, with René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg using a picked up AK-47 to take down three in one of them. With a 14-13 lead, Immortals were approaching the A site with a man advantage, but boltz missed out on a kill against Magisk that ended up costing his team. North clutched that round and got to a 15-14 lead but the Brazilians secured overtime by taking B with a fast paced play.

In the additional rounds, the Danish team kept a clean sheet on the Counter-Terrorist side and closed out the map 19-15 as Immortals seemed to have run out of steam on Overpass.



aizy was a bit underwhelming in the series

North played a lot of Cobblestone in this tournament, winning on it three out of four times they played, but the start to the match didn't reflect that. Immortals started off with the Terrorist side pistol round win, lost the "bonus round" in which they used the leftover SMG's, but won the following one to reset the Danes early on.

Magisk held the line in A long to pick up two in their next full buy round, but a 5v3 advantage crumbled as Lincoln "⁠fnx⁠" Lau sneaked into the A site to take down the defense with a quick quad kill. North managed to pick up a few CT rounds, but the lack of consistency in round wins meant their economy was constantly poor, limiting their utility and options on the CT side.

A force buy at 8-2 almost paid off for MSL's team as they got a 3v5 advantage, but it came down to HEN1 and fnx to clutch out the round and set their team up for a strong 11-4 halftime lead.

The B site offensive was successful for North in the pistol, but leftover weapons from the force proved deadly as "⁠⁠" shut down the Terrorist on B and Immortals ended up closing out the match 16-6 to win the series 2-1.

Key Moment: On the first map, Cache, the score was 14-14 and North were on the brink of completing the comeback. In the following round, HEN1 got a crucial AWP pick in mid while the B site defense played a tricky two-man setup behind the box that allowed the rest of the team early rotation towards A—where Immortals shut down the Terrorist and then won the map 16-14.

PotM: Henrique "⁠HEN1⁠" Teles was the best player in both map wins for the Brazilians, picking up a lot of entry frags and finishing the series with 78 kills, 90.6 ADR and a 1.36 rating.

IEM Katowice 2017 Best of 3 Immortals Matchpage 2 1 North 16 Cache 14 15 Overpass 19 16 Cobblestone 6

Immortals K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Henrique 'HEN1' TelesHEN1 78 - 49 +29 90.6 1.43 Lincoln 'fnx' Laufnx 71 - 51 +20 93.0 1.36 Ricardo 'boltz' Prassboltz 57 - 53 +4 83.5 1.11 Lucas 'LUCAS1' TelesLUCAS1 52 - 59 -7 68.1 0.99 Lucas 'steel' Lopessteel 54 - 62 -8 68.9 0.97 North K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 René 'cajunb' Borgcajunb 64 - 61 +3 81.9 1.05 Emil 'Magisk' ReifMagisk 58 - 63 -5 69.5 0.94 Mathias 'MSL' LauridsenMSL 52 - 65 -13 66.8 0.93 Kristian 'k0nfig' Wieneckek0nfig 55 - 64 -9 74.2 0.89 Philip 'aizy' Aistrupaizy 45 - 59 -14 64.2 0.86

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.