Meta Monday: karrigan's double fake that pushed FaZe and ENCE into a wild quintuple OT decider

Relive one of the key moments of the instant classic on Ancient between FaZe and ENCE in the IEM Dallas semi-finals.

Harry Richards contributed to this article.

The decider map of the IEM Dallas semi-final bout between FaZe and ENCE on Ancient became an instant classic that will live long in the memories of the fans who watched the quintuple overtime brawl.

The series started cold with two one-sided maps — Mirage, which went the way of FaZe 16-8, and Anubis, which went to Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer’s men with a 16-6 scoreline —, but it heated up in the decider to become the most exciting map played so far this year.

ENCE found themselves down 13-14 after dropping an early lead on Ancient, although two late rounds on the defense off the back of a brilliant quad-kill by Pavle "⁠Maden⁠" Bošković put them on match point.

Up with their backs against the ropes, Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and his men pulled off a brilliant double fake to walk into the A site uncontested, pushing the map into an overtime pandemonium which lasted another 29 rounds before ENCE put a stop to FaZe’s brute force attempts to come out on top.

Conditioning

The current meta on Ancient, in which the CT player in Donut can hear the steps of Terrorists running towards the A site, has established defenses often going for a 3-2-0 or 2-3-0 formation with a skew towards the B site and Mid in the early moments of a round. This setup often leaves A weakly defended before the mid-round is established.

FaZe had started their comeback by winning a late round 2vs4 situation on A and they then rushed the site three rounds later, making it a viable site to hit throughout the round. This kept ENCE on their toes and guessing, the perfect condition for karrigan's trickery.

"I called it because we didn’t do many fakes in the beginning and we did some fast A executes/rushes and also 2x wave A executes," karrigan told HLTV when asked about the play. "So I had a feeling they would buy into a cheap fake and over-rotate, especially with the score in mind.

"I just thought: 'It’s now or never, the most important thing is that we believe.' I remember telling my teammates, with 40 seconds left, 'Somebody has to commit into B,' and I told the last two guys to rush Donut. We we went out A so we had trades in case one CT stayed."

The final round of regulation

FaZe, after a failed A hit in the 29th round, pulled a double fake that would take them right back to that site, but this time uncontested. They started by dumping loads of utility on A and Mid, after which ENCE over-rotated when no action developed on the site and noise was made by the attackers towards B.

Then Russel "⁠Twistzz⁠" Van Dulken got a crucial opening kill, stuck in on a duel against Maden on B. By then the bomb was already sitting in A main and the final two teammates who had helped sell the fake on B were well on their way back through Donut.

Guy "⁠NertZ⁠" Iluz, who had been smoked out of Red and was running from the A fake to the B fake, was forced to remain on the B site a few extra seconds to get the trade on Twistzz while a slow team-wide reaction to the second fake sealed ENCE's fate in the round.

Paweł "⁠dycha⁠" Dycha and Alvaro "⁠SunPayus⁠" Garcia scrambled to get back to A in time, but to no avail — it was too late. The bomb was already going down, FaZe had full control of the site, and there was enough time to get into comfortable post-plant positions. Overtime was in the books.