The veto process began with HEROIC removing Dust2 and Spirit eliminating Inferno. HEROIC chose Anubis as their map pick, while Spirit opted for Nuke. The remaining bans saw HEROIC remove Mirage and Spirit take out Ancient, leaving Train as the decider.
The series kicked off on Anubis, HEROIC’s choice. Álvaro "SunPayus" García delivered a dominating performance with 14 kills, driving HEROIC to a 9-3 lead at halftime. Despite this strong start, however, Spirit staged a well-fought comeback, taking advantage of late-round missteps from HEROIC to narrowly win 13-11 in an unconvincing but crucial victory.
Team Spirit made a note of not making the same mistakes on Nuke, however. The Russian squad finished the T-side half with a 9-3 lead. Their CT side was flawless, denying HEROIC any chance of recovery and closing the map with a decisive 13-3 victory.
This win secured Spirit’s place in the tournament’s final four, having defeated fnatic and FlyQuest both with a 2-0 scoreline in the BLAST Bounty closed qualifier.
What did the players say?
In a post-match interview, Danil "donk" Kryshkovets, talked about their victory and acknowledged the team’s communication struggles, saying, “We were struggling with the communication on LAN. We know why it happened, and we will fix it”. He also candidly admitted to struggling on Nuke, where he ultimately finished with the lowest score on his team.
Álvaro "SunPayus" García, the standout performer for HEROIC with an impressive 1.24 rating in the series, also shared his perspective in a post-match interview. “We were playing well, but we weren’t expecting them to play as fast on Anubis. There were so many 2v2s and 1v1s, if we won one duel it would be a difference maker. But I’m really happy, enjoying the game, and happy to be here,” he said.
HEROIC’s Linus "LNZ" Holtäng took to X to reflect on the loss and to acknowledge Pavle “maden” Bošković performance as a stand-in for tN1R: “0-2 @Team Spirit. Tough game to win especially with the circumstances. Thanks maden for stand-in, he's a really great guy. See you in Katowice”.
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