The Blast Pro Series is the first tournament organised and hosted by RFRSH Entertainment. RFRSH Entertainment has been investing huge amounts of money into CS GO and several individual teams as well. The success and development of the scene works well in their interests. Blast Pro Series will play out from November 24-25, 2017. It will feature six top teams in attendance at Copenhagen.

The event which is supposed to be broadcasted at over 20 television networks across Europe has seen a significant amount of energy and interest from the Greater Copenhagen region. With RFRSH already investing a lot of money into Danish CS GO teams such as Heroic, Astralis the Copenhagen based company is a well known name already in esports.

The Blast Pro Series is a very ‘compact’ Counter Strike Global Offensive LAN tournament. THe tournament will see the six teams play out all their matches in a single day. This format has been untested previously in Counter Strike. The maps for the Group stage BO1’s have already been pre-decided by PGL, who are helping RFRSH run the tournament. This format is very unique and only time will tell about it’s viability in the long run. The elongated playing hours basically leaves little room for the players’ rest and that might be a disappointment in the format.

In this article we take a look at the various teams in attendance at the tournament. Blast Pro Series kicks off at a very opportune moment, when there is no clear ranking in CSGO . Most of the teams are very evenly matched and that is what makes this event very exciting.

Blast Pro Series – Powered by Unibet

The Blast Pro Series is going to be one of the biggest LAN tournament series in the upcoming months. With the level of investment coming in via RFRSH entertainment we can be sure that the next tournaments are going to be even better. RFRSH is also looking to legitimize esports with various contracts and moves with the local government agencies.

This Friday 24th and Saturday 25th of November , the best CS:GO teams in Europe are meeting up for an epic eSports battle. Blast Pro Series is set out to become one of the most legendary events in Copenhagen this years with teams like FaZe Clan, Astralis, G2 Esports or Ninjas in Pyjamas competing for a prize pool of more than €200.000. Head sponsor of the event is Unibet, one of the most prominent online gambling companies in Europe.

BLAST Pro Series is one of the world’s newest and most explosive live eSports events out there. With an audience of 15,000 in Copenhagen, home of some of the biggest Counter Strike teams present like Astralis and North. The Saturday matches will be played in the state-of-the-art Royal Arena, making the Blast Pro Series the largest eSports tournament ever in Denmark.

Head sponsor of the event is Unibet, a European online gambling company. Unibet is making the entire event available on livestream. On top of that, new Unibet clients will be receiving €30 worth of free bets after their first deposit.Unibet is a very safe betting website with security and privacy being their top concerns. Yet they are always able to make

Astralis

Astralis are one of the top teams in the event, but they will not be playing at their full capacity. With Device out of the tournament due to medical reasons, Astralis have lost a big part of their CS GO roster. We have seen how the absence of Device resulted in an early group stage exit for the Danish team. That being said, they did play extremely well at IEM Oakland 2017. With their coach standing in, the team was able to formulate a very good performance. But the format meant that they could not qualify to the playoff stage.

The Astralis roster is well known for their amazing T side coordination. They are extremely strong on maps such as Overpass, where they are considered the best team in the world. However good T side coordination comes only from repeated practice and understanding your teammates gameplay. Losing Device who forms the core of their lineup is a big blow to the Danish side.

I was very surprised that I was hospitalized in Oakland, and the flight home afterwards wasn’t fun either. Right now I am feeling better, but I am going through a lot of testing still.

The timing is really bad, and I was looking forward to play in front of the first home crowd we’ve had in Denmark, but health comes first and I’m sure I will get this opportunity another time.

Device

The Stand-ins

Dennis and Pimp will be filling in for Device at Blast Pro Series 2017. While not on the level of Device, these individuals have amazing talent on their hands. Since both the players are not on any team right now, putting on a good performance at Blast Pro Series definitely puts them on the radar for scouting teams. Dennis is amazing with the pistol and it could give Astralis an early advantage in several of their matches.

Ultimately Astralis is a team that is not complete, but their individual talent is what can propel them to the playoffs. With four out of the total six teams advancing to the semifinals, they stand a very good shot at making it to the playoffs.

Faze & G2

Faze suffered a very close loss to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the finals of IEM Oakland 2017. The tournament brought forth several problems that the team faces when their players are not on fire. With amazing individuals on the roster, the times when skill is more than enough for the team are many. But the team is built around the ‘star-power’ and they remain a very entertaining and flashy team to watch.

But the team faces a problem on the map pool depth. While they are a very skilled team when it comes to their strength on particular maps they are very limited. Faze remain committed to winning matches based off pure skill and the experience of veterans on the team. Their team coordination still requires a lot of polishing, something that will still take time. However that being said, this has not stopped them from being the top team in Counter Strike Global Offensive. They should be easily able to make it to the playoffs without any problems.

G2 on the other hand is a team that is in dire need of help. The French roster remains strong on paper, but very weak in actuality. As with several other French teams of the past, the initial honeymoon period has ended and the team is in a self-doubting session. With the likes of KennyS, Shox on the team they should technically be able to win tournaments. But they have not been able to live upto their potential. It would not be a surprise to see them crash out of the tournament early.

SK Gaming

The most decorated team in CS GO history introduced roster changes in order to turn around their poor results. This has worked wonders for the team in the past when they were able to win majors off a roster change. Fallen is one of the most well known In Game Leaders and he understands his players very well. However this time around, it has only seemed to deepen the problem.

IEM Oakland saw SK lose to NIP in the semifinals. This was a result that was not expected by many analysts in the industry. A reddit post attributed a big part of the loss to Taco not performing well. He had a meagre 23 kills in 77 rounds. While that has since been debated the fact is that SK Gaming were not playing up to their full potential. The team does not seem to be a well oiled machine as they were in the past.

SK Gaming comes into the tournament with a huge advantage in the map vetoes. They are a team with a very wide and varied map pool. The map vetoes for the Group stage have already been announced and we see how the map vetoes play out for SK Gaming. This has resulted in them banning Cache against many other teams. Indeed the Group stage of this tournament will not feature Cache at all. SK Gaming will be playing Cobblestone, Inferno, Train and Mirage (2) against the opponents. This does seem to be a favorable map set for the Brazilian roster. Ultimately their success at the tournament depends on whether they are able to win their respective matches.

Ninjas in Pyjamas

The Ninjas surprised everyone with their stellar performance at IEM Oakland 2017. They have put in months of hard work in game and also in the mental aspect of the game. The efforts put in by their mental coach, Jens Hofner has definitely paid out as we have seen in several interviews with the plays. The mental resilience of the team was clearly visible in the several comebacks that they stages throughout the tournament.

Under the tutelage of Jens and Threat, NIP are a dark horse in this tournament. They definitely have the talent and skill required to win this tournament, but they have not yet proved themselves on the international stage. Their last tournament wins ( prior to Oakland 2017) were Dreamhack Valencia and IEM Oakland 2016 last year. The lack of silverware for the team definitely sticks out and we wonder if their win at IEM Oakland 2017 was a fluke. Well Blast Pro Series provides them a way to prove themselves.

NIP have definitely improved drastically over their previous selves. We see sound mid round calls and NIP winning rounds on their talent. We totally expect NIP to make the semifinals at Blast Pro Series, especially on the back of the amazing performance that the team put up at IEM Oakland 2017.Rez and F0rest form the crux of the team right now. If Get_Right also starts to perform well, this team would truly be unstoppable.

North Gaming

The local boys from Denmark will be at home during this tournament. The support of the crowd and the comfort of playing from their home city does play an advantage for the team. MSL and his boys have already reached the venue and have praised the facilities at the venue.

But the question is how strong are North in their current form? Can they defeat the stalwarts in the tournament, especially with NIP also featuring as a top team in the tournament? North have not played many international LANs involving the top teams, but whenever they have participated they have secured good results.

The remain a team which is considerably strong but has limited exposure to the top teams consistently on a LAN setting. They can cause an upset in this tournament especially with Astralis and SK Looking weak in their current form.

RFRSH and the Future

RFRSH Entertainment have already announced future plans to further the series. They will be hosting several more iterations of the Blast Pro Series in the upcoming months. With this long term commitment to hosting several CS GO Tournaments in the future, we see this tournament becoming a household name in CS GO.

Blast Pro Entertainment has already signed a deal with Twitch for future commitments as well. While initially there was a lot of hesitation on which streaming service to select, they have settled on Twitch and will be hosting multiple streams at once. This will ensure that they schedule is not affected due to the simultaneous games.

With Blast Pro Series already confirming about a NA Blast Pro Series edition in early 2018, we can expect some quality CS GO in the months to come. For now you can watch the Blast Pro Series action live on Twitch at BlastProSeries.

Image Credit to HLTV.org and Mashable