This article is part of our CS:GO Recap series.
This week in Montreal, eight teams have begun competing in the latest iteration of the Northern Arena LAN Finals. With some big names in both groups, there was plenty of action to be had on the first day.
The first game of the day was between G2 and compLexity Gaming. Both teams are trying to get a bit of foothold in the competitive Counter-Strike scene. G2 was once seen as a top-five team, but has fallen from grace of late with some less-than-stellar play. compLexity is just trying to show it can hang with the big boys. It did just that against G2 to open the tournament. While the final score ended up being 16-11 in favor of G2, compLexity did start with a 7-0 lead before letting G2 rattle off 14 straight to seize control and eventually take the map. compLexity surely has work to do, but at least it put up some fight against G2.
Team EnVyUs took the stage next to battle Counter Logic Gaming and things were nowhere near as close as the first game between G2 and compLexity. EnVyUs shot out of the gate and ran CLG off the map from the start. The Boys in Blue got off to a 13-2 lead at the half before wrapping up the 16-3 win a few rounds later. No player on CLG posted a positive KD, with three of its players being in the negative double digits.
The final games in the initial group stage matches for both Groups A and B were pretty straightforward and one-sided. Heroic took down Team Liquid in a 16-7 match on Cobblestone. OpTic Gaming took down NRG eSports in an even more one-sided 16-6 match. This left both Liquid and NRG to stave off elimination in the matches at the end of the day.
The first elimination match of the day came down to a battle between Team Liquid and compLexity. Well, battle would be implying there was an actual fight as both games were over rather quickly. Liquid won Game 1 on Cache 16-5 and Game 2 on Nuke 16-3. Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski went off, posting a ridiculous 59/26 KD and a 123.3 ADR across both games. The series win gave Liquid a second life, as they will face the loser of Friday's match between G2 Esports and Heroic to see which team will come out of Group A as the #2 seed.
The final series of the days saw NRG take on CLG in the elimination match of Group B. The first game on Overpass was an extremely close game that went into overtime to find a winner. NRG got off to a slow start, going into the half down 4-11, but ended up flipping the second half on its head to force overtime. In that overtime, NRG rattled off four straight wins to take the map 19-15. That win seemed to break the will of CLG, as they were easily handled 16-4 on Dust 2 in the next game to get bounced from the tournament. NRG will now await the loser of the EnVyUs vs. OpTic game Friday afternoon to find its opponent.
With one day in the books, there is still plenty of action to be had in Montreal this weekend. Day 2 of the group stages kicks off Friday at 11:00 AM EST with G2 Esports taking on Heroic.
