Greatest Games: Astralis vs Virtus.pro| ELEAGUE Major 2017 | 3/3: Train
Recently I’ve been reading Jamie Carragher’s Greatest Games book, and I’ll go straight ahead and quote his opening:
Think about the greatest games you have seen. Now ask yourself this: how often have you watched them again in full?
My answer was never. Never had I watched one of my favourite games, in Counter-Strike or Football, again in full. So that is the intention of this series: to rewatch the best Counter-Strike maps in full and see if they were as good as on the first watch.
Next was the question of which map to choose, and since it was Astralis’ 5 year anniversary a few days ago I decided to pick this game — the moment Astralis won their first major.
It helps that I (was) an Astralis fan, and I have no qualms admitting that my nostalgia-infused brain has made this my favourite match of CS:GO. That I have focussed on Train here is no insult to Nuke or Overpass as spectacles; both maps were tightly contested and had interesting twists, with TaZ’ eco 3k and Xyp9x’ 1HP 1v3 staying with me as much as any single round on Train.
Yet Train had its own advantages: the nature of any map 3 is that it is an even-playing field. Astralis had already played train three times this tournament, including two victories so it is easy to see why they allowed it to be the decider. On the other hand, the frequency of play gave VP ample material for counter-stratting, and they were far from slouches on the map themselves.
Astralis’ reputation for choking also meant the tension going into the map was ramped even higher. All I could picture was NiP at Cluj-Napoca, NaVi at Columbus, or the countless other times Device Dupreeh and Xyp9x fell down under pressure — a memory that surely was just as vivid for the players. More recently, they had lost ELEAGUE to OpTic Gaming, another sign their mentality was far from perfect.
So when I sat down to rewatch this game in 2021, it was through a very different lens. ELEAGUE 2017 was a false dawn, with Astralis needing Magisk before their choking issues faded into the background, exposed only on rare occasions as the team became the greatest frontrunners ever seen. So how much foreshadowing is there in this great game, either of the Astralis of 2017 ultimately falling short, or of the present contingent becoming the greatest team to ever grace the game.
From an Astralis standpoint, the first seven rounds were terrifying. VP open with a B rush, eviscerating Xyp9x whilst Device misses several shots from connector. In the first gun round, another difference between the Astralis of today and of then is notable: in a 3v4, locked out of outer, they attempt the retake. After one player falls, they try to save but are hunted down. It is fair to say the Astralis of today would have gone nowhere near that retake. In round six, Device misses a shot on the bomb-carrier, allowing it to go down and turning the round into a difficult retake; he is now 0 for 6, as are Astralis.
It would be the next gun round, at 0–7, that Astralis finally convert, but they survive with just two players and are lucky to do so; Dupreeh and Xyp9x over peek in the 3v1 and the latter is fortunate he won the duel. That only two players survive proves important, as VP rush B in the following round and force Device to save with the Danes’ economy in tatters. At 8–1, it looks awful for Astralis: their economy is weak, Device has not got going at all and Virtus Plow is in full effect.
Not for the last time this map, Gla1ve calls a force buy. They still have device’s AWP, but it is Gla1ve’s gamble to stack 3 players on B — in a 4v5 — that wins them the round. In the next round, Device is picked by Pasha, but Kjaerbye picks up all three kills in the ensuing 3v3 to give Astralis their third round. This is the narrative of the final; it is Astralis’ two new additions that halt the plow. Gla1ve’s reads and Kjaerbye’s fragging prove instrumental in their success, with the core members playing a supporting role.
Yet, it would be unfair to say the core do not help out — in the very next round Device doubles his kill count with a double in a 3v4 post-plant to turn the round into Astralis’ favour, and finally break their opponent’s economy. But it would be more unfair to understate the newcomers’ impact, with Kjaerbye’s 0.1 second defuse after besting Snax in a 1v1 in the next round a defining moment of the map. It is also significant that Astralis again over-peek in a clutch scenario, giving Virtus Pro duels that could be avoided. Kjaerbye wins in the end, but it would have been very different had he killed Snax just one tenth of a second later.
The half finishes 9–6 to VP, and they convert the second pistol round — their fifth of the best of three — into a 12–6 lead. Astralis win the first proper gun-round, but are immediately reset by a half-buying VP triple pushing B halls. VP now lead 13–7, 3 rounds away from their second major title.
The next round is what has gone into history. 5 tec-9s, 4 smokes, 5 flashes. Anders comments that it “would take nothing short of a miracle” for Astralis to come back from this as the Danes take their time in setting up for an execute with 50 seconds left on the clock. The smokes land; the trades come in. As the dust clears, Xyp9x is left in a 1v1 against Snax — the players both sides would want in a clutch. Yet Xyp has all the advantages, and one taps the Pole with his $500 pistol.
In the next gun-round, at 9–13, Astralis push A again with Byali landing the only CT frag before the site falls. At 11–13, Gla1ve switches it up, defaulting into a B execute and setting up device for an easy 2K in the post-plant sitting on the ramp. The momentum has shifted.
But at 12–13, all the old demons return to Astralis — they rush into a B stack with four VP players ready to defend. The fourth player, Snax, gets three kills from connector as VP succeed on their half-buy. Gla1ve responds in a way that illustrates his greatness, and his difference from his predecessor Karrigan. Although a fantastic IGL, Karrigan’s career-defining moment it is running into the B site on Inferno with 10 seconds left on the clock in another ELEAGUE major final. In Gla1ve’s most important moment, he calls a B rush, correctly reading that VP have just one player there.
This tempo remains high in the last two rounds once Astralis convert the anti-eco, and his quick thinking gives the Astralis players no time to contemplate how close they are to greatness, or to reflect on their past failings under pressure. After the B rush gets Astralis to 14–14, Gla1ve doubles down on this approach. He calls an A rush, but a dry A rush — not a single smoke is thrown before the Danes barrel out onto the outer bombsite. VP are clearly not prepared, and crushed as not a single player is allowed to save.
Gla1ve then compounds his greatness — at 15–14, the deciding map of a major final, he triples down. Another dry A rush is called, safe in the knowledge VP cannot afford any incendaries. The two players to get the kills are fitting; MVP Kjaerbye opens with two entries, and out-of-role Dupreeh closes with a triple kill. Astralis have seemingly overcome their demons.
There are signs, however, that this is a false dawn. One comes in this last round, and is very much only applicable in hindsight. It is Kjaerbye who carries Astralis to victory, something that he failed to repeat too often. You would be hard-pressed to find someone who in January 2017 thought that this would be Kjaerbye’s career peak; Semmler comments on how young he is several times, and his 29 kills in this map would be crucial to securing the major MVP. That Kjaerbye endured a decline is a shame — his K/D differential at the next major was just 1 — but this arguably benefitted Astralis in the long-term, given that they sorted out their role conflict and allowed Dupreeh to take Kjaerbye’s old roles.
Another takeaway is Device’s underperformance; he put up just 52 ADR in the final map, and aside from a few 2Ks his performance went under the radar. Having come into the final in MVP form, he went negative in two maps of the final. This would happen again in Krakow later that year, as Gambit knock out Astralis in astonishing fashion. To this day, Device has not completely overcome his choking, but Gla1ve and Zonic have created a system whereby he is not expected to carry. This was foreshadowed in round 25 in 2017, when Device is set up by Gla1ve as a turret and fed two easy kills. Yet this development was not complete in 2017, and his underperformance in this final is a warning sign that Astralis were not quite ready for their era just yet.
Yet, the most important take-away is that Gla1ve himself did not crumble under the pressure. All the signs that he would become Counter-Strike’s greatest IGL are present here: there are reads, frags and the balls-to-the-wall rushes that perfectly negated pressure from affecting his players. His system may have not fully evolved yet — Astralis went for unwinnable retakes, and nearly threw some clutch rounds — but Gla1ve’s greatness is clearly shown in this map.
In terms of a personal takeaway, was this map as magical as it was watching it for the first time in 2017? Maybe not: the tension and fear of the ‘Astralis choke’ are naturally not present in a rerun, but it was striking how fiercely contested every round was.
The most common criticism of this major is that the field was weak; SK had a stand-in, half of Fnatic had gone to GODSENT and the coaching rule change had come at the worst possible time for NaVi. Yet this criticism does not apply to the final: the Virtus Plow was in full effect as they stormed to a 7–0, and a 13–7, lead. We see the fragging of Kjaerbye. We see Gla1ve forgo his preferred default-heavy style for fast rushes in the final four rounds. We see VP, not Astralis, falter under the pressure.
So this may have been a false dawn for Astralis, but it was a thrilling tournament for them with a final to match. It had two evenly matched teams performing well and taking the audience with them right through all thirty rounds. So Happy 5th Birthday Astralis, and this very well might be your greatest game: it showed your flaws, but all the clues are there that Gla1ve would one day take you right to the stars.
