Astralis defeated NIP in their last match at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024 and earned a spot at BLAST Premier: Fall Final 2024. NIP in turn traveled to BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024 where they will battle for a spot in the finals.

Astralis approached the match as the favorite, but NIP were also good. After all, they managed to defeat the strong FaZe 2-0, but unfortunately they couldn't exceed expectations. Also all the attention of the match was Artem "r1nkle" Moroz, who for 4 games has an average rating of 6.5, which is quite excellent against the best teams.

Before that, the teams met already against each other in YaLLa Compass 2024, where NIP were stronger and defeated them in BO1 match on Ancient. On the same occasion, Ancient was the third map.

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Match details

Already at the map selection stage there were some issues, such as the fact that Astralis and NIP did not choose their best Ancient map, but left it for last. NIP decided to choose Mirage, on which Astralis has a 24% higher win rate. In turn Astralis' choice was Inferno, where they have a winrate of 50%, while NIP only has 40%.

The first map started off equal where the teams traded rounds, but Astralis still took the lead and ended the first half in their favor with a score of 8-4. In the second half, the game continued in favor of Astralis and they won with a resounding score of 13-6.

The second map started with a pistol round win from NIP, after which Astralis managed to take the lead and win 9 rounds in a row, ending the half with a resounding 9-3 score. NIP managed to win a second pistol round and an economic one from Astralis, but those two rounds were the last rounds they won. Astralis won with a score of 13-5.

The best player of the match was Astralis captain Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, who finished the game with 30-17 stats, while r1nkle played very badly, finishing mirage with 4-14 stats, thus playing his worst map on LAN.

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Player reaction

Lots of games on BLAST this week, some good, some bad, the important thing is that there is something to take from these games. GGs to all the teams we faced. Looking forward to the next tournaments

wrote isak on his Twitter account

Future Tournaments

The next major tournament will be IEM Cologne 2024, which NIP did not receive an invitation to and will not play in. Astralis, on the other hand, received an invitation straight to the main stage, where they will start on August 10.

Also, both teams are on high positions in Valve's regional rankings and will definitely receive invitations to the Perfect World Shanghai Major 2024 qualifiers, where the first qualifications will be played at the end of August.