Heroic secured a spot in the semi-finals over OpTic in a 2-1 series (Train 11-16, Cobblestone 16-11, Nuke 16-9) while compLexity beat Rogue to get out of groups at Northern Arena.

Heroic and OpTic were the teams to start the bracket play at Northern Arena in the first match of day three.

Considering the roster issues of OpTic and Heroic topping their group, the Danes were considered a strong favorite to go on to the semi-finals, but that didn't show in the first map of the series - Train.

It was Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic that was causing Heroic a lot of problems on the first map, though the rest of the OpTic team followed closely and secured a strong 9-6 lead as Terrorists.

Coming into the second half, we saw both teams winning force-buy rounds and resetting the opposing team's economy multiple times. Four rounds were traded until Damian "⁠daps⁠" Steele's team finally conceded the early economy war and decided to save for a full buy.



NAF was crucial in Optic's first map win

That decision proved to be crucial for OpTic as Heroic seemed unable to get rounds against a full-bought Counter-Terrorist side. In the end, OpTic closed out their map pick with a 16-11 scoreline.

Coming into the second map, Cobblestone, Michael "⁠Friis⁠" Jørgensen's side started hot and took an early 7-3 lead as Counter-Terrorists. OpTic managed to sneak in a few more rounds to end the half 9-6, bit it wasn't enough in the and as Heroic managed to close out the map with another 16-11 score, this time in favor of the Danes.

The series came down to the decider map - Nuke, on which Heroic had a great start as Terrorists, helped by Null element's inability to string rounds together. William "⁠RUSH⁠" Wierzba helped his team to get six rounds on the board before the first half ended, but the North-American team was unable to make a comeback in the end.

Northern Arena 2016 - Toronto Best of 3 Heroic Matchpage 2 1 OpTic 11 Train 16 16 Cobblestone 11 16 Nuke 9

Heroic K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossandergla1ve 64 - 53 +11 88.5 1.25 Valdemar 'valde' Bjørn Vangsåvalde 59 - 57 +2 86.8 1.20 Andreas 'MODDII' FridhMODDII 60 - 50 +10 81.0 1.17 Michael 'Friis' JørgensenFriis 56 - 52 +4 68.0 1.02 Marco 'Snappi' PfeifferSnappi 38 - 55 -17 56.2 0.79 OpTic K - D +/- ADR Rating 2.0 William 'RUSH' WierzbaRUSH 71 - 58 +13 87.8 1.27 Keith 'NAF' MarkovicNAF 52 - 53 -1 87.2 1.12 Damian 'daps' Steeledaps 56 - 55 +1 70.2 0.96 Peter 'stanislaw' Jarguzstanislaw 47 - 60 -13 69.9 0.89 Oscar 'mixwell' Cañellasmixwell 41 - 53 -12 59.7 0.87

Meanwhile, the last group stage match was played between Complexity and Rogue. The team comprised of three Canadian and two UK players managed to upset Mathieu "⁠Maniac⁠" Quiquerez's side with a quick 2-0.

Bradley "⁠ANDROID⁠" Fodor and Kia "⁠Surreal⁠" Man were the main sources of firepower for Complexity, while the Rogue youngster Kevin "⁠HS⁠" Tarn struggled on his first big international LAN. Complexity won Rogue's pick Mirage 16-7 and punched their ticket for the playoffs with a 16-14 win on Cache.





Coming up next at Northern Arena are two more quarter-final matches: Immortals - Selfless and CLG - Cloud9.