• News

Astralis Wins 2018 ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier

After a minor setback at ESL One Cologne, Astralis showed that they are, once again, the team to beat in CS:GO.

Ozzie Mejia

July 29, 2018 1:45 PM

1

The ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier has wrapped up and, despite a few pitfalls over the last few months, Astralis has re-asserted itself as the best team in the world. The Danish squad took the tournament 2-0 in the Grand Finals, cementing their tournament victory with a 16-12 win on Nuke.

While Astralis has historically performed well on Nuke, Team Liquid didn't make this victory easy for them, as each squad traded wins at halftime and beyond. At one point, both teams were tied at 11 rounds a piece. Astralis pulled away from there, with Magisk clinching the tournament after Emil "Magisk" Reif picked off Epitácio "TACO" de Melo

The big surprise of the weekend was Team Liquid, who came into this weekend fresh off a disappointing ESL One Cologne performance. Their road to the final including double 2-0 scrubbing of MIBR (the former SK Gaming roster) and a shocking 2-0 semifinal win over ESL One Cologne champions Natus Vincere. They had lost to Astralis in the group stages 2-0 earlier in the weekend.

This is Astralis' fourth major win of 2018 and it comes in dominant fashion, as they complete the ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier without dropping a single map. For their victory, Astralis takes $500,000 of the $1 million prize pool. The world's best CS:GO teams will regroup and prepare for DreamHack Masters Stockholm, the next tournament in the Intel Grand Slam.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?