by in
In their first game of IEM Cologne 2022, 00 Nation went up against Astralis and secured a win over their Danish counterparts. The Norwegian franchise decimated Astralis in the best-of-one fixture, winning 16-6.
This victory comes four days after 00 Nation made significant changes to their Counter-Strike roster. The squad now consists of the former GODSENT trio Epitácio “TACO” de Melo, Bruno “latto” Rebelatto and Eduardo “dumau” Wolkmer, as well as Santino “try” Rigal, Marcelo “coldzera” David, coach Olavo “cky” Napoleão, analyst coach Alan “adr” Riveros, and manager Ricardo “dead” Sinigaglia.
No one expected 00 Nation to dominate the match-up against Astralis the way they did. They prevailed over the Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander-led team with a 16-6 record on the Mirage map.
At first, it appeared as though the match might be a back-and-forth affair, with Astralis gaining a few rounds on the T-side. However, the Danes were unable to get past the defense of their opponents, who won another five rounds to finish the first half with a score of 10-5.
If the history of Counter-Strike has shown us anything is that games are more than capable of being won by the team on the losing side. Especially considering the fact that the counter-terrorists are a more straightforward faction to play on paper.
00 Nation were able to maintain their momentum and win both the second pistol round and the anti-ecos that followed it in a convincing manner. Astralis were successful in stealing one round, but that was the only victory they would take.
Given that this Astralis roster has been playing together for more than four months, their loss to 00 Nation comes as a huge surprise. On the other hand, TACO, latto, and dumau were only added to the South American squad four days ago, and the team has only competed in three official matches with them up until this point. Latto and Dumau, two of the players who came into the game later, finished on top of the scoreboard by the time the game was over. Latto had a 23-10 K/D ratio, and Dumau had a 19-15 scoreline.
All 00 Nation players recorded kills in double-digits with try leading the team with 24 kills and coldzera with the least number of kills (12). As opposed to 00 Nation amazing record, no Astralis player posted 20 or more kills, with blameF leading the team with 18 kills. Gla1ve (8) and k0nfig (5) recorded the least number of kills.
The South Americas had a great outing overall with four of five players finishing the game with over 1.00 ratings. Only coldzera finished the game with a 0.92 rating, try recorded the most ratings, posting a stellar 3.00 rating. Latto finished with 2.30, dumau and TACO registered 1.27 and 1.17 ratings respectively.
The Danes, on the other hand, had four of their five players below the 1.0 ratings, with only blameF posting a 1.06 rating.
