In a surprising turn of events, North won the DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018 tournament against fellow Dutch team Astralis in a best-of-3 series with many memorable highlights.
DreamHack Masters Stockholm came to a close yesterday as Dutch CS:GO team North won a stellar 2:1 against Astralis. Despite Astralis being the clear favorite in the match and having the first pick of the map pool, North managed to score the victory, winning the tournament and bringing in $100,000 in prize money.
The first match took place on Dust2, a map picked by Astralis, and viewers saw North absolutely dominate their opponent, coming out 16:1 in North’s favor. The first half had North playing on the Terrorist side and they executed their strategy to great success, as indicated by aizy’s double-frag entry on Long in the 10th round and later team captain MSL’s defense of the bomb plant on A, where he picked off three of Astralis’ players using the AWP. The Dust2 match was brought to an end with niko scoring a headshot on Xyp9x using the USP from Car.
The second match was played on Train, the map of choice for North. This time, Astralis fared much better, securing a 16:6, winning 10 rounds in the first half and 6 during the second. The highlight of this match is owed to valde, who successfully defended the B site, killing four of Astralis’ members using the M4A4.
The third and final match of the series was much closer than the first two, with the final score closing in at 16:11 in North’s favor. It took place on Overpass and both teams had great success on the Terrorist side, though North managed to come out ahead. Niko had a field day on the CT side, however, killing four Astralis members and bringing their efforts to a complete halt. In the end, MSL was the highest scoring player of the series, with 51 kills and 42 deaths.
This is North’s third won tournament for 2018, with the team reaching first place in DreamHack Open Valencia 2018 and DreamHack Open Tours 2018, in July and May respectively. The team also competed in StarSeries & i-League in June 2018, where they finished in the respectable 3rd – 4th place bracket, along with mousesports, whom they beat in the Semi-Finals of DreamHack Masters Stockholm 2018. North is set to play again in the FACEIT Major: London 2018 tournament, which will begin on 5 September 2018.
