Complexity eliminate ENCE, advance to IEM Katowice group stage

The North American side emerged victorious from the series off the back of strong showings from Håkon "⁠hallzerk⁠" Fjærli and Michael "⁠Grim⁠" Wince.

Complexity are through to the top-16 stage of IEM Katowice following a 2-1 victory over ENCE in the lower bracket, a result which also ends the tournament run of the Finnish organization and Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha's hopes of playing in the Spodek Arena.

The North American team came out of the gates strong on their pick of Anubis, but couldn't find an answer to ENCE's T side on Vertigo and needed Inferno to resolve the series. Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer's side will head home hanging their heads in disappointment following the defeat, with Valdemar "⁠valde⁠" Bjørn Vangså pointing towards the early disadvantages the team ended up in on Inferno as part of the reason for the loss.

"The short story on the T side is that we simply lost too many stupid entries," the Dane said on broadcast. "It felt like every single round ten seconds passed by and then we were 4vs5. T side Inferno can be hard playing a man down, I think even the rounds we won were actually in 3vs5, 4vs5 scenarios, so I think we gave away too many easy kills.

"It's tough for me to say what exactly went wrong [in the series], but I felt like it was a mix between too many rookie mistakes in some of the scenarios where we needed to play a bit slower and have some better communication, and then as I said before we gave too many free entries on the T side."

Complexity rained down fire on their pick of Anubis to start the series, a 1vs2 clutch from Johnny "⁠JT⁠" Theodosiou in the pistol round enabling his team a 3-0 start on the T side. ENCE responded in kind with three rounds of their own but ended up on the losing end of a brief back-and-forth battle for control as Complexity regained their footing, a handful of squandered advantages allowing JT's side to edge ahead 8-7 at the break.

Multi-kill rounds from Snappi and Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković offered ENCE a window back into the lead, and they seized upon it by winning five of the first six rounds after the side swap, 12-9. Complexity made some breathing room for themselves off the back of a double kill from Grim, a round that proved pivotal in getting the North American side back into the game. From that point onward, they dropped just one round en route to a 16-13 finish, with hallzerk stepping up toward the end of the map to get his team over the line.

None of Complexity's individuals kept up their strong level on Vertigo, and ENCE quickly established why the map was their pick as they showcased strong form on the T-side. An early string of five rounds was more or less all that Complexity had to their name in the first half, unable to compete against a phenomenal performance from Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia, who led the charge in a 9-6 scoreline for ENCE.

A pistol victory and subsequent conversion helped Complexity close the gap somewhat after the side swap, and they made up for dropping a round to pistols from ENCE with a clean-cut reply in round four to bring themselves within one round, 10-9. Multi-kill rounds from SunPayus resumed in earnest to halt Complexity's comeback effort, however, and the European combine capitalized off the Spaniard's stellar AWPing to swiftly close things out from that point onward, 16-11.

The Inferno decider was much more one-sided than the first two maps as ENCE couldn't find an answer for Complexity's stalwart CT-side. Grim and hallzerk were unstoppable for the entirety of the first half and continued to demolish ENCE's attacking efforts round after round, posting an 11-4 lead at the break before wasting no time in bringing the map to an end in the second half, 16-8.