Astralis make short work of ViCi Gaming in the opening match of IEM Beijing 2019

Cover Image Courtesy: Intel Extreme Masters | Thumbnail Image Courtesy: Astralis

The much-awaited IEM Beijing 2019 started today with Astralis taking on ViCi Gaming, the two teams kicked off the event, going up against each other in a best-of-three series.

The bout flagged off on Inferno which was the map picked by ViCi Gaming. The Chinese team was not prepared well for the Danish onslaught, Astralis playing CT-sided on Inferno were off to a brilliant start, picking up ten out of the first eleven rounds, ending the half with a massive lead. ViCi retaliated well during the start of the second half but ran out of steam pretty early, giving Astralis a chance to shift the momentum back to their side and walk away with an easy victory.

Nuke was the map chosen by Astralis for the second game, as they once again had a great first half playing T-sided. With momentum and lead both on their side, the Danes were able to shutdown ViCi quite hard, as they crossed the finished line without any trouble.

With this, ViCi Gaming go down to Astralis ‘2-0’ and fall down to the elimination bracket where they will be going up against the loser of 100Thieves vs ENCE match-up.

It was a really disappointing performance by ViCi Gaming who could only manage to win a total of nine rounds across the two maps. The team were connecting their shots pretty well but seemed to be in disarray when it came to managing themselves across the maps.

Astralis came in top shape, nowhere near what we saw from the side in Copenhagen just a week back. For a change, it was gla1ve leading the Danish pack with an overall rating of 1.59 while device top fragged for his side with a total of 41 kills.

But this was just a trailer of what is to come next as they are set to go up against either 100Thieves or ENCE in the Winners’ Match scheduled to take place at 17:10 IST/19:40 CST.