BLAST Premier Fall Groups – Group B Favorites

BLAST Premier Fall Group has begun and group B matches are scheduled to start later today. This group features three of the world’s best CS2 teams and should be very exciting to watch.

Group B Favorites

Here are the teams that need to either win this group or at least finish 2^nd if they want to qualify for BLAST Premier Fall Final:

• Team Vitality (ranked 4^th)
• GamerLegion (28^th)
• Astralis (8^th)
• Team Falcons (13^th)

Based on everything we know and have seen in the past three months, Team Vitality and Astralis are the two big favorites. It’s hard to believe at this point that Falcons can do anything to stop them. As for GamerLegion, they don’t stand a chance in this group.

Here’s a brief analysis of each participant.

Vitality

Thanks to ZywOo and Spinx, Vitality’s roster is one of the strongest in Counter-Strike. In 2024, this team finished 3^rd – 4^th at PGL Major Copenhagen and BLAST Premier Spring Final. They were also 2^nd at ESL Pro League S19 and IEM Dallas. More recently, at the Esports World Cup, they finished 5^th – 8^th.

Vitality will play against GamerLegion in their first match. If they win, they will have two opportunities to either win the group or finish 2^nd. The format is double-elimination and all matches are best-of-three, which should favor them thanks to their versatility.

Last time GamerLegion beat us was in 2022, and that’s not about to change #VITWIN

⏰ 17:00 CEST vs @GamerLegion pic.twitter.com/JEEhauYlzz

— Team Vitality CS (@TeamVitalityCS) July 29, 2024

Astralis

Astralis are now a much stronger team than they were back when blameF was the IGL. With dev1ce playing this role, everything is much smoother. As long as the players implement his tactics, most teams have no chance to beat them in best-of-three matches.

In 2024, Astralis finished 3^rd – 4^th at four consecutive tournaments and 5^th – 6^th at the 5^th. These are the last five tournaments they played. Based on the results they obtained, it’s clear that they’re in great shape right now and might even triumph against Vitality.

Falcons

Falcons finished 3^rd – 4^th at IEM Katowice but after that, they went from failure to failure until they finished 2^nd at DreamHack Summer, an A-tier event. With the most recent roster change, Falcons are, at least on paper, a very strong team.

There are four Danes on the roster, joined by SunPayus and maden. The only problem is that so far, the synergy hasn’t been there.

GamerLegion

GamerLegion would need an absolute miracle to get a top-two result in this group. They haven’t done anything important all year apart from the 3^rd – 4^th place they got at CCT Season 1 Global Finals. The entire roster is made up of little-known players who are nowhere near the likes of dev1ce, ZywOo, or dupreeh.

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