BLAST Premier Spring Groups: Heroic and Astralis advance to Spring Final

After the last two games of the BLAST Premier Spring Groups have concluded, we now know the last two teams that will go directly to the Spring Finals. In the single-elimination bracket, Heroic met BIG and won 2-1, while in the other matchup, OG and Astralis faced each other, resulting in Astralis’ victory.

BIG and OG continue on April 12 in the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2023, where they will join Team Liquid, Ninjas in Pajamas, Complexity, and Evil Geniuses. The rest of the participating teams and the location of the event are not yet known, but the event has 16 slots and a prize pool of $135,000.

But first, here’s the recap of the last two Spring Groups games!

Heroic defeat BIG

Fatih “gob b” Dayik and his squad chose Vertigo over the familiar Mirage, which would also later prove to be a costly mistake that Heroic exploited to set the pace of the series. BIG could only win two hard-fought rounds on offense, thanks to Florian “syrsoN” Rische, who got off to a good start.

Undeterred, Heroic took control of the map on the CT side to gain a 13-2 lead at halftime. Swiss analyst Mathieu “Maniac” Quiquerez didn’t hold back after the Danes’ inevitable 16-3 win between the maps, calling it “a fierce defeat” for BIG.

Martin “stavn” Lund was the 10th best player of 2022, earning a point on Ancient for his team. But his 1.29 rating and 22 kills weren’t enough to stop BIG from winning the map 16-12 despite not having played the German team since June 2022. The Danish youngster failed at the first chance to qualify for the Spring Final against Vitality. He should get another chance on the last map though.

After two wild and unexpected maps that backfired for both teams, the series settled on the familiar Inferno map, albeit without an exciting decider. BIG was put through the meat grinder on defense and Heroic forged a 12-3 halftime lead before scoring four of 11 strikes in the second half for a 16-10 win.

Astralis sends OG into Spring Showdown

On Inferno, Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz almost made an ace, but that wasn’t enough to win the pistol round. However, later Astralis was able to gain a foothold and took a lead of 8:3. With a 4K from Adam “NEOFRAG” Zouhar the dominance of the Danes came to an end and OG was able to close the gap a little until halftime, which meant that it was only 7:8 for OG.

Abdul “Degster” Gasanov, Shahar “flameZ” Shushan, and Maciej “F1KU” Miklas gave OG a six-round lead early in the second half, forging a solid 13-8 lead. Even though Astralis was able to catch up a few laps, it wasn’t enough and OG got the first win.