Welcome to EGamersWorld.
We continue to watch what's happening on the Counter-Strike 2 professional scene. Right now the focus is on BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024.
There, the first round matches that determine the quarter-finalists continue. Among the contenders for the quarter-finals there is GamerLegion.
We are trying to find out who of the pair GamerLegion - BIG will be stronger and will pass to the next round of BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024.
Let's go.
BIG's form.
We open the BIG vs GamerLegion match with an analysis of BIG's form. In this match, the German club plays the number one side with odds to win at around 1.6.
In the 2023 season, BIG participated in a lot of championships, but there were not many decent results. They started top-9 at BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2023, and went on to top-16 at IEM Extreme Masters Katowice 2023.
There was also an appearance at ESL Pro League Season 17 with a top-20 there. The failures partially managed to cap off the Top-4 at the Elis Invitational Winter 2023, where the team reached the Top-4.
In the middle of the year, the Germans failed to qualify for BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, finishing top-11 at RMR Europe and then top-3 at qualification. In the second half of the year they started playing CCT Series championships, where it is worth noting CCT Online Finals #1, with TOP-4, CCT West Europe Series $4 with TOP-2.
Back to the S-Tier tournaments with BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023 with Top-9, and then Top-24 at IEM Cologne 2023.
- BIG lineup: tabseN, Krimbo, prosus, syrsoN, JDC.
Before the ESL Pro League Season 18 Long Convergence, the team played at Thunderpick World Championship 2023: European Series #1 with TOP-2. There was also a top-8 at CCT East Europe Series #7 and a win at CCT Europe Series #7.
At ESL Pro League Season 18 they debuted with a match against Monte. The Ukrainian club fought honourably, but in the end they were defeated by Ledgeil with the score 1-2, putting BIG in the semi-finals of Group B at ESL Pro League Season 18.
In the previous match, BIG made perhaps the biggest sensation of the tournament. The Germans defeated Heroic, sending them to the bottom of the group.
Next, BIG played another big European club - ENCE. The Finns failed to win (1-2), but BIG made it to the play-offs, straight into the second round. That's where their ESL Pro League Season 18 journey came to an end.
BIG Ledge and Eternal Fire in the second round of play-offs with the score 0-2. Thus, the Germans took the EPL S18 top-12.
In the match before that, BIG played against 9INE. The Germans defeated their visions quite easily, closing the match with a score of 2-0.
Afterwards, BIG outplayed ENCE and advanced to the finals of BLAST Premier: Fall European Showdown 2023. However, BIG were not enough for the final as C9 won 2-0.
Prior to the Roobet Cup 2023, BIG played two CCT tournaments. It was CCT North Europe Series #8 and CCT East Europe Series #3. They finished in the top 16 at the latter, but won the North European tournament, beating Spirit 2-0 in the grand final.
The Roobet Cup 2023 ended quite well for BIG. The team finished in the top 8, and repeated that result at Thunderpick World Championship 2023. They also played at CCT Online FInals #4, where they finished in the top 3.
In the first match at CCT Online Finals #5 BIG played Zero Tenacity. "The Germans proved to be stronger, easily defeating ZT. In the next game BIG faced Guild Eagles and were stronger, and very confidently - 2-0. Next, the BIG stage opponent was 9 Pandas and once again the Germans did not feel the enemy. A confident 2-0 against the Pandas led them to the final of the upper grid. There they slammed Aurora without much difficulty and later repeated this in the grand final of the tournament.
BIG started the tournament with a rather lacklustre loss against Vp, but followed it up with a colourful and hard fought win against Heroic. Even more colourful was the victory over Cloud9 in the lower finals match, where BIG shut out the "titular" Americans 2-0. However, it was not possible to come out of their group victorious and Vp repeated their debut success. Next, BIG fought Astralis in the match for the BLAST Premier: Spring Finals 2024, but they failed there as well.
They played at IEM Katowice 2024, where they finished only in the top 20. Before playing at ESL Pro League Season 19, the team visited BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown, where they finished top-8, Skyesports Masters 2023, where they reached top-4 and Thunderpick World Championship 2024 with top-4.
At the ESL Pro League Season 19 BIG got into the group D and qualified there by passing the "middle grid". However, they didn't manage to play long at ESL Pro League Season 19: TOP-16. Before the BLAST Premier, the team played a number of "smaller" tournaments, including IEM Dallas 2024 (TOP-8), YaLLa Compass 2024 (TOP-12) and CCT Season 2 European Series #5 (TOP-8). They also attended BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, where they finished in the Top 9-12.
BIG played at IEM Cologne 2024, where they lost in a blowout. They finished in the top 17-20, which is not an acceptable result if you want it to be.
BIG Mapple
BIG has 3 of the best maps in their arsenal. They are Overpass, Vertigo and Anubis with 5 matches and 3 wins on each.
The most played map is Ancient. BIG have played 14 matches there and have a 57% win rate.
The most unlucky map is Inferno with 2 wins and 2 losses. The worst map is Mirage (9 matches, 33% wins).
GamerLegion form
We continue the GL vs BIG match with the analysis of GamerLegion's form. In this match they are playing as the number two with odds to win around 2.1.
After the triumphant Paris Major a, GamerLegion lost in terms of performance. However, they are not weak, otherwise they would look much worse at major tournaments than they do now.
In 2023, GamerLegion didn't show much promise. They played well at local events like Thunderpick Bitcoin Series #2 where they won, CCT West Europe Series #1 where they finished top 2, RES Western European Masters: Spring 2023 where they finished top 2 again.
There was also TOP-1 at Elisa Invitational Winter 2023, but the main achievement happened in May this year. It was then that GamerLegion defied logic and made it to the grand final of BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, where they defeated the hosts Vitality.
- GamerLegion line-up: volt, sl3nd, aNdu, FL4MUS, ztr.
After a great injury in Paris, GamerLegion lost two of their headliners - siuhy and iM. New arrivals neaLaN and volt are not yet reaching the level of Top 2 Major a, and their KDs are eloquent: 0.64 for the former and 0.78 for the latter.
The first match at IEM Cologne 2023 was against Monte. The Ukrainian club was head to head and shut down their vis-a-vis with a score of 2-0 (16-8 Mirage, 16-11 Overpass).
GamerLegion managed to switch on at the last moment. In the match against TheMongolZ, on the first map GL Ledge were 8-16 up on Mirage, but cameback Inferno (16-8), and closed the series on the dopes with Overpass (19-15).
The International was even more interesting against fnatic. On the first map Vertigo GL lost with the score 5-16, but on Inferno GamerLegion played 16-12, and on Ancient they closed the dopes with the score 19-17.
As a result, IEM Cologne 2023 ended with GL in 8th place. They were knocked out by Cloud9, but the result is a good one considering the lineup change.
At Gamers8 Long Sogpeg were matched against Apeks, the other opener of the Paris Major. Both maps gave GL a serious headache, but after dopes on Mirage and a close fight on Overpass GL made it to the next round. However, that's where GL's G8 journey ended at the Top 8, when they lost to Heroic 1-2.
GamerLegion later attended ESL Pro League Season 18 and IEM Sydney 2023. Both tournaments didn't go well: top-20 at EPL, top-8 at IEM Sydney.
ESL Challenger Jonkoping 2023 GL is going pretty well. First Ledge beat MIBR 9-13, and then beat 3DMAX 2-1 in the match for life. With a race left, GL made it to the top 6, but there Ledgeili Vp.
Towards the end of the year Gamer Legion played at Elisa Masters Espoo 2023, where they reached the top 6, BB Dacha (top 8) and ESL Challenger at DreamHack Atlanta. Top 8 there again.
There were two big tournaments in the 2024 season before RMR's Long Sogpeg - BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2024 and IEM Katowice 2024. Both GL championships finished in the top 12, which I would call a pretty good result.
At PGL Major Copenhagen 2024: European RMR B GL Long Sogpeg started with a no-hitter against VItality (3-13) before beating Pera (13-6) and losing to ENCE (14-16) on the dopes. Later Ledgealy and Heroic, as well as 9Pandas in the Decider match, after which they were unable to go to the Major.
However, they ended up in Copenhagen, because 9Pandas couldn't get visas for travelling to Denmark. GamerLegion looked good in Copenhagen, but it was not enough to pass in Elimination Stage, and GL's way at the first ever Major tournament on Counter-Strike ended on 17-19th line.
GamerLegion also played at ESL Pro League Season 19, where they finished in the top 16. They also played at BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2024, where they could not jump above the top-16.
GamerLegion mappool
The best map GL is Overpass. The team has 6 wins and 2 losses there.
There was also Ancient with 2 wins and 1 loss. Still have Mirage in the pool (57% wins in 7 matches).
On Inferno they are 2-2. Nuke has 1 try and a loss.
Not playing on Anubis and Vertigo.
History of head-to-head meetings GamerLegion - BIG
Played each other at Thunderpick World Championship 2024 and at BLAST Premier: Spring Showdown 2024, where BIG won twice.
Projected result of GL vs BIG at BLAST Premier: Fall Showdown 2024
GL have a good chance of clawing their way to a bo1 win in this match. We saw BIG blow the qualification for RMR, so I'm going to put my faith in GL.
Bottom line: GamerLegion wins.
