Karrigan and co. continue to make things difficult for themselves, but they once again pulled it out of the bag with incredible comebacks in the semifinal against ENCE and the grand final against MOUZ to secure another CS2 tournament victory after a marathon day of play.
If Virtus.pro are paid by the round, as the popular meme goes, FaZe might be paid by the map, or at least the surprise of fans. Their conquest of the day began a map down against ENCE, losing their own pick of Nuke, then only scoring five rounds on the CT side of Ancient. Then, the now-usual script kicked in, averting two match points in regulation off the back of ropz’s heroics before winning the map in overtime, then winning map three, Anubis, by the narrowest of margins in CS2, 13-11.
While the youngsters of MOUZ also needed to play a three-mapper against Astralis to make it to the grand final, their match was considerably shorter. Not that it helped them on Mirage, losing their own map pick 7-13 despite Jimpphat’s incredible, server-topping 1.42 rating.
The young Finn also turned out to be the most on-form player on Nuke as well, as he and his team limited FaZe to only four rounds on the T side, then seemingly set themselves up for a big win after breaking back from the pistol round loss and posting three rounds in a row, soon finding themselves with a 12-6 lead.
With ropz and rain falling short and broky missing some straightforward shots, it seemed like the long day of action was finally getting to FaZe. Instead, it was another Cinderella story with a six-round comeback as everyone came alive one after another, going into a triple-overtime affair, where both sides failed to convert their first few match points, only for FaZe to go four out of four at the third time of asking.
This made it three CS2 tournament wins in a row for karrigan’s men, who took down the IEM Sydney 2023 title and the Thunderpick World Championship 2023 event soon after, further cementing themselves as the dominant team to beat in the new iteration of Counter-Strike.
Of course, the rumors continue to swerve about the roster’s long-term prospects after Complexity’s parent company’s acquisition of FaZe and the conflict-of-interest rules that are about to kick in. Twistzz, in particular, has been linked with a return to Team Liquid—and in the post-match interview, he was asked about it all. James Banks brought up the team’s non-stop comebacks, which the young American called “the FaZe way.”
“And many more to come?”—came the question.
A momentary silence, then a diplomatic answer.
“I think the next one is looking pretty good,” was his response.
