Zowie’s plan on giving India a chance to represent their best team in Shanghai was grabbed by Team Invictus. They beat Brutality, MxB, and Invisible Wings twice to secure their spot in the CS:GO Main event. Invictus will fly to Shanghai to represent India and compete with the best of the bests to fight for the $100,000 prize pool.
Team Invictus were qualified through the Zowie Extremesland Online Qualifiers after beating Team Overcome. The LAN playoffs began with the top 4 teams who got aligned from the online qualifiers. Joining Team Invictus in the playoffs were, Brutality, MxB and Team Invisible Wings. After beating Brutality pretty comfortable during the online qualifiers, Invictus looked strong to win the tournament and were the favorites.
In the very, first match of the series Team Invictus lost their battle to Invisible Wings settling the scoreline 22-25 (de_train) in a breathtaking opener. Following the event’s double elimination schedule, every team had the opportunity to be in the game after their initial elimination. Entering into the finals were Invisible Wings from lower bracket finals who beat Brutality 2-1 (de_dust2 16-13, de_cbble 19-17, de_train 16-19), and Invictus who beat Invisible Wings 2-0 (de_mirage 22-19, 16-9).
Mirage
The final series, best of three started on Team Invictus’ pick mirage wherein they won the knife and chose the CT side, to begin with. The first few rounds were comfortably won by Invisible Wings as ‘psy’ and co. were demolishing the sites by rushing from either way taking no prisoners. Pistols and the following guns round were dominated strongly by IW as they steer the scoreboard to 5-0 strong start which forced Invictus to call their first tactical pause.
Team Invictus bought the next few rounds pulling the score in their favor slightly with a couple of rounds, only to get destroyed back by psy’s picks which led the score to 6-3 with 5 of them alive, contributing to the economy. Ritesh ‘RitZ’ Shah who have been putting efforts to get back to his level did manage to get a comfortable 3K post plant in a gun round making the scores 9-3 in their favor. The first half was settled at 11-4, massively inclined towards Invisible Wings.
Things looked balanced when Team Invictus managed to win the pistol and a couple of following anti- eco’s and gun rounds, but things went monotonously different when Invictus forced IW to a decimating eco round at 12-12. The match transformed into a much intense match following a 1v3 clutch by MithilF after being down a round, which made scores tying up once again to 13-13. To respond back, Ace and co. did play a pretty comfortable game, in the end, calmly winning the map 16-13 at de_mirage.
Cobblestone
The second map was rather an opposite reflection of the first, the game started favoring Team Invictus in cobblestone where Invisible Wings initially trailed by 2-9 scoreboard which looked scary for them being on the favored site. The first half of the game was dull comparatively to the second one as the score halted at 10-5 during intermission favoring Invictus, much of the similar scoreline in Mirage which favored IW. The map looked worse when IW lost the pistol round in the second half which made the score completely weighted towards Invictus to a 12-5.
The map looked worse when IW lost the pistol round in the second half which made the score completely weighted towards Invictus to a 12-5. The buy round, however, got IW back on track as they won a couple of good rounds forcing Invictus to pause and making the scoreline less imbalanced to 12-9. As the gap kept shrinking, the intensified match turned around upside down once again, Akshay ‘Kappa’ Sinkar, the lead entry fragger of Invisible Wings clutched an important round keeping the hopes alive and advancing with the scores to 12-11. The scores tied quickly at 12-12 and the map went on ahead with 12-14 to Invisible Wings. Invictus called a pause at that very moment. And it brought them the results, the very famous ‘fnatic’ pause. The 27th round, the most important round of the match seemed like a dead dream for Invictus, but Tejas ‘Ace’ Sawant, who was having not his best, stood up for his team and clutched a close to impossible 1v3, keeping their hopes alive.
The momentum gained after winning the 27th round stimulated Invictus, and they went on to win the game 14-16 losing, leaving the third map idle.
Final standings
Invictus – 1st
Invisible Wings – 2nd
Brutality – 3rd
Invictus won Zowie eXTREMESLAND CS:GO India Qualifiers, they will be flying to Shanghai as an Indian team to play and compete with the other qualified Asian teams. We wish them a very good luck and expect them to return with a trophy!
