OpTic Gaming wins the ELeague 'CS:GO' Season 2 championship

OpTic Gaming defeated Astralis to win the ELeague Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Season 2 championship Saturday, walking away with $400,000 and a team achievement: their first-ever championship at a major international tournament.

Both Astralis and OpTic Gaming came into the finals never having won a big international tournament, but the North American OpTic managed to control the pace of the second and third maps to beat the Danish Astralis, 2-1.

OpTic is only the second North American team to win a major championship in nine years after Cloud9 won ESL Pro League Season 4 in October.

OpTic Gaming defeated Mousesports and FaZe Clan to make it to the finals. Astralis took out two CS:GO powerhouses Ninjas in Pyjamas and SK Gaming in the playoffs, both of which have seen huge success in 2016.

Map 1: Train

OpTic Gaming came out with the same over-aggressive defense that allowed them to steamroll over FaZe Clan in the semifinals Friday night, but Astralis wasn't having it.

Astralis absolutely dominated OpTic, shutting down their defense round after round and racking up a huge 9-0 lead to kick off the finals.

After the ninth round, OpTic slowed it down and started to turn the momentum in their favor, taking two rounds to finally put some numbers on the board. The two teams traded rounds as OpTic found their footing and the hometown crowd cheered them on. Astralis was up 11-4 at the half.

In the pistol round to start the second half, OpTic went down after a very close round, all but guaranteeing Astralis an easy path to taking the first map.

After losing two rounds, OpTic came out with almost nothing but AK-47s and Peter "Stanislaw" Jarguz racked up three sneaky kills to build momentum in the second half. The teams traded a few more rounds, and Astralis ended up taking the first map 16-9 with an amazing clutch 3v1 from Peter "Dupreeh" Rasmussen.

Map 2: Cobblestone

OpTic Gaming lost both pistol rounds on Train but started out with a win on the second map, Cobblestone. With that win under their belts, OpTic were on a roll.

In the seventh round, Astralis was broken down and took an economy round. OpTic's Tarik Celik utilized his weapon advantage and demonstrated an astoundingly wide spray transfer to knock out the first two kills of the round and put OpTic up 7-0.

Astralis managed to grab the eighth round but OpTic slowed the next round way down, sitting and waiting on the clock and completely wiping out Astralis to decimate their economy.

It seemed like the two teams switched places after Train, as OpTic took the first half 11-4, except when they were destroyed by Astralis in the last round.

OpTic Gaming took the pistol round to kick off the second half, giving them a comfortable economy lead and allowing them to take the second map 16-6. The best-of-three series was tied 1-1.

Map 3: Overpass

OpTic led off map three, Overpass, winning the pistol round and forcing Astralis to go into the second round without much more than pistols. Astralis didn't care, and caught OpTic's offense off guard, taking the second round to everyone's surprise.

OpTic managed to take the next round, firmly putting the momentum back in their favor. The North American squad took an 8-2 lead before Astralis fought back, helped by an amazing three-kill clutch by Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth.

Astralis followed it up with another clutch from Dupreeh, which put them on a roll to win the remaining rounds. OpTic was up 8-7 at the end of the first half.

OpTic took their fourth pistol round in a row and this time kept the momentum going to take a 12-7 lead, until Astralis' Tarik made an unbelievable quad-kill clutch play to put it at 13-8.

Astralis couldn't turn that round win into a streak, though, as OpTic tore them apart. Astralis made a poor decision and moved through a smoke screen right into Stanislaw, who racked up a tight three-kill spree.

Astralis managed to get a decent streak going once OpTic hit match point, pushing the score to 11-15 before OpTic took the last round, winning the ELeague Season 2 championship.

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