ENCE qualify for Antwerp over Anonymo, Entropiq eliminated by HEET

Entropiq suffered a shock early exit at the hands of HEET, whilst ENCE secured qualification as expected.

ENCE followed up on their fantastic ESL Pro League run by securing Major qualification in convincing fashion in Bucharest, besting Anonymo 16-9, 16-10 on Overpass and Mirage respectively, whilst Entropiq's woeful run in the RMR culminated in a 0-2 loss at the hands of HEET.

ENCE were comfortably the better team in their series with the entire squad contributing frags and impact, whilst HEET had Thomas "⁠Djoko⁠" Pavoni and Aurélien "⁠afro⁠" Drapier to thank for their dominant win.

ENCE will have to wait until other results in the RMR are confirmed before learning if they will have the chance to fight for the third Legends spot available.

The qualification series opened with the ENCE pick of Overpass, and the European squad got off to a great start, coming back from a pistol loss to get out to a 5-1 lead; the Poles fought their way back into the half with five rounds in a row of their own, bringing the score back to 6-5 in their own favour. Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković found a key clutch to break the streak which earned ENCE a great return of seven rounds on their T side, the score ending 7-8 at the half.

Once again Anonymo threw the follow up round after winning the pistol, and this allowed ENCE to take control of the game on CT side; such was their control that they won nine rounds straight to close the map 16-9. Anonymo will be kicking themselves for not making the map closer, having lost several rounds in man-advantage situations and to force-buys.

Mirage, the pick of Anonymo, provided no more joy than Overpass for the Polish side; they laboured in finding any traction on their T side, struggling to string rounds together. Olek "⁠hades⁠" Miskiewicz had a fantastic half on the AWP for his team, leading ENCE to a 10-5 half on the CT side.

Anonymo lost their CT pistol to give themselves little chance to mount a comeback, but they did give themselves hope by winning a deagle force-buy early in the half to earn a string of five rounds. Unfortunately the rounds were such close affairs that the Poles never built an economical advantage, so a single successful B hit from ENCE broke them and led to a 16-10 win for the EU squad.

Over on the B stream, Nuke, the pick of HEET, was the opening map of the series and the French side posted a convincing win on their best map.

Entropiq kicked off on the CT side and started poorly, letting HEET get to a 4-3 score despite winning the pistol, before the Russian squad started to assert themselves on the defence. The Frenchmen did manage to find another round in the half, giving themselves a solid five round haul on the unfavoured offensive half.

HEET were an absolute wall on their CT side, posting 11 rounds in a row without reply to quietly put the game to bed 16-10; Entropiq will be frustrated that they didn't really pose any serious problems on their offense.

The Entropiq map of Overpass came next, and the Russian squad yet again struggled on their offensive half, falling to a 5-10 deficit largely due to a lack of individual firepower; they found precious few entries, and no player posted even 70 ADR for the half.

Losing the second half pistol meant Entropiq faced an uphill battle to get back into the series, however they did manage to pick four up in a row after winning the first gun round to at least put up a fight; once HEET stabilised their economy, they duly closed the map out 16-9 to keep themselves in the hunt for a Major spot.