Coming into IEM Oakland, Astralis had plenty to prove. Since the team took the CS:GO world by storm earlier this year, the Danes have been somewhat quiet. The team won ECS Season 2 to end 2016 before following that up with a big win in January at the ELEAGUE Major. This looked to usher in a new era of Astralis, but that simply wasn't the case. After winning IEM Katowice in March, Astralis has failed to win a single tournament all year long. To say Oakland was a big moment would be an understatement.
This tournament is one of the few moments of truth, so to speak, for teams to take part in before the ELEAGUE Major Boston in January 2018. You've got IEM Oakland, ECS Season 4 Finals, and the ESL Pro League Finals. That's just about it until the teams descend on the American Northeast for the next Major.
With that context in mind, Astralis was on the back foot from the start. The team announced Tuesday morning that star player, Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, came down with an illness that would keep him out for the team's first game against Ninjas in Pyjamas. This forced coach Danny "zonic" Sorensen to step in for the AWPer. While coaching is one thing, playing in a match is a whole different story. Zonic's 12/22 KD, coupled with his early positioning error that saw teammate Peter "dupreeh" Rothmann almost friendly fire zonic to death, in that match shows that disconnect as the team was defeated 16-11 on Overpass. Fortunately for Astralis, dev1ce was ready to go for their last two matches of the day. Everything should be fixed, right? Not so fast.
While dev1ce was back in action for these final two games, he certainly didn't look like himself. On Train for the second game, he only managed an 11/17 KD, complete with just six AWP kills, in the 16-6 loss. Not exactly what you want out of your star AWPer, that's for sure. In their final game of the day, however, dev1ce was clearly getting back into a nice groove. He finished with a 22/16 KD, with 16 of those kills coming from his AWP.
Astralis is currently 1-2 in Group A and only has two more games on Wednesday to try and dig out of the early hole they've dug for themselves. Their match against SK Gaming on Day 2 just gained a ton more weight.
