CCS LAN finals: Team SoloMid wins the title

Team SoloMid are the champions of CCS Kick-off season. The Danish team managed to maintain their one map lead and win against Fnatic 3-1.

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The final day of the CCS kick-off season LAN finals brought us the grand finals between Team SolMmid and Fnatic. During the first two days we saw the Danish team really excel, defeating both Fnatic and Ninjas in Pyjamas with the same score of 2-0. On the other side, the Swedish finalist, Fnatic, had a bit of a rocky way since they got dropped to the lower brackets by Team SoloMid in their opening match of the LAN finals. Following this loss, Pronax and his team defeated Team EnVyUs and Ninjas in Pyjamas very convincingly to schedule a re-match with the Danes.

The veto process was slightly changed from the previous matches here at CCS LAN finals. TSM had an extra veto before the pick phase. The Danish team decided to remove de_cobblestone and de_cache, while Fnatic didn't want to play de_nuke. Following the extra ban by TSM, Fnatic now could choose 2 maps while TSM could pick only one. Fnatic went for de_mirage and de_overpass, while TSM took one of their strongest maps, de_dust2. The last map in the pool, de_inferno, would be used as a decider if needed.

Map 1 - de_mirage

Coming to the grand finals with one map deficit, Fnatic didn't really have any space for any mistakes and they had to have a perfect run. Mirage was the first map in the line and the knife round was won by the Swedes. However, they didn't go for an obvious pick of CT side, but instead they decided to start on the less favored side of this map.

The pistol round was opened on A site where Fnatic just stomped in, but with great shots from device and karrigan they were quickly slowed. It was looking like JW would finish TSM off from behind as he was lurking from the ladder room, but he got killed and it was all down on flusha's back. The Swedish player didn't have much trouble with his aim as he gave a two perfect headshots and the pistol round went to Fnatic. The next round saw a nice opening by karrigan who sniped a mid kill with his scout, but Fnatic once again went for A site and got an early plant. In the end, TSM just didn't had enough time to defuse the bomb and Fnatic extended their lead. TSM decided to force a really unorthodox buy, as they went for M4, SMG, scout and pistols. This move didn't really work out for them and Fnatic was quickly on 6-0. In the 7th round of this map TSM finally got themselves on board with the first round. Fnatic went for another A push but they got shut down and the Danes claimed their first round. However, Swedish confidence didn't get shaked and they just switched to another site and won the next round. It was 7-1 for Fnatic and they were just playing a flawless match. However, TSM still had a joker in their hands. The Danish team choose to go with a double awp on A/mid and it paid off as they finally out-aimed Fnatic's players. From this moment on we could only witness a TSM's show as they were winning a round after round, led by phenomenal karrigan. At the end of the first half we could finally see TSM taking their first lead on this map, 8-7.

The second half brought us a very passive pistol round. TSM went for a quick push on catwalk, but they quickly lost 2 players and exchanged frags, they got stuck in the ladder room with the bomb. The time was ticking and they had to make a move. Fnatic overextended a bit on B short pushing with two players and they got punished. From this moment on TSM took a full control of this match. Danes won a seven consecutive rounds before Fnatic could actually win their first CT side round. AWP, auto sniper, M4s and all type of weapons in hands of Fnatic's players couldn't really stop the TSM's push as they were just stomping in the sites and exchanging kills. In the end, Fnatic took 4 rounds in this half as the consolation prize, but more important Team SoloMid scored their first map which has put them up to 2-0 lead in this best-of-five series.

Map 2 - de_dust2

Fnatic once again showed that they are masters of the knives as they took the knife round. This time the Swedes decided to actually go with the CT side and not T side as they did in the previous map. TSM committed to the B push where KRiMZ easily found a clean HS through the smoke which was followed by a fest of headshots from Fnatic's side and TSM just got completely shut down. Fnatic was playing really agressive on their CT side. We could see them pushing up middle multiple times. The first time they used this was in the 3rd round when TSM actually bought. olofmeister went up middle and managed to catch the bomb carrier which eventually won them a round. Flusha was showing some good aim skils with the p90 as he was topping the scoreboard. TSM finally got themselves on the scoreboard in the 6th round after Fnatic failed with their push on middle where they committed with three players. We were in the middle of the first half and cajunb was still struggling to find his first frag. Fnatic with their agressive approach didn't really leave a lot space to TSM to work with and the first half went in a very dominating fashion to Fnatic, 12-3. The top fraggers were flusha with 22 and JW with 19, while cajunb on TSM side had 0 kills in the first half.

The second half got opened by karrigan who got an easy kill on long, but despite being two men down Fnatic still won the pistol round and climbed up on 13th rounds. The next round saw a full buy of Fnatic where they easily went on B site, but when it was all looking like it will be another won round by Fnatic, their captain pronax got kicked out from the server and they were left in a 3v2 situation which TSM used to win and get on 13-4. After ecoing one round Fnatic got themselves a first match point on 15-5, but TSM was showing a good defense at this point of the match. They were easily getting out of any kind of situation and very quickly after we could see a 15-11 scoreline. This time, Fnatic went for a force buy and a very quick A long rush which worked out as they caught 2 TSM players there and the rest was an easy execution. This map went to Fnatic with 16-11.

Map 3 - de_overpass

Overpass was one of the favourite picks of Fnatic ever since the map went through the official pool. However, after the DH Winter incident they were staying away from it. This time, they had one more important match in front of them to play on it. Once again confirming their skills with the knives, Fnatic won a knife round and decided to go with the CT side. The pistol round brought us a bit more action than usual, as we saw TSM planting down the bomb on B site and Fnatic playing retake with the all five players. Although Fnatic took the first round, TSM went full of confidence into the next one using the tec9 train on B site and winning the round for 1-1. From this moment on, both teams were exchanging the rounds back and fourth. However, Fnatic did stop on the 4 round mark for quite a while and TSM used it to make a nice stash as they were moving on to the CT side in the second half. The first half score was 9-6 for TSM.

The second part of this map showed us how dominant TSM is at this very moment. The Danish team was just playing the perfect defense and Fnatic didn't really have any answers to this. TSM were finding early picks on Fnatic in the first 10 or 20 seconds of the rounds, so the Swedish team always had to work with a man deficit. This all lead into nine match points for TSM (15-6). However, at this moment Fnatic decided to change up the pace and went for a quick B rush where JW found two entry frags and TSM decided to go back and try to save their guns. Fnatic went for a hunt and managed to kill off every remaining player of TSM. From this moment on TSM had to play a money game. They were ecoing and then forcing and trying to win that one round, but Fnatic were playing a very good T side and it was really hard for the Danes to stop them with no real economy. On 11-15 TSM went for a fast A push towards pool with pistols only. They caught up Fnatic on playground and managed to clean them all. This is the first LAN title for Team SoloMid, dropping only a single map in 3 matches.

The prize pool distribution:

1. Team Solomid - $40,000

2. Fnatic - $20,000

3. Ninjas in Pyjamas - $10,000

4. Team EnVyUs - $5,000

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