Renegades Defeat ENCE in StarLadder Berlin’s Biggest Upset Yet

In the very first quarterfinal of the CS:GO StarLadder Berlin Major’s Champions Stage, the 8^th seeded Renegades defeat ENCE, 1st seeded, in dominating 2-0 fashion.

Vetos took the squads to Mirage and Nuke, the former being Renegade’s map. The Aussie team took flight with a one-sided 11-4 T half performance. They then cleaned up on the CT side ending the map in a 16-5 affair.

Justin “jks” Savage top fragged the server with 20 kills and 101.8 ADR (average damage per round). The map was so lopsided that no ENCE player fragged higher than any Renegades player.

Despite this, ENCE was expected to take their own map and get to the tiebreaker. They had previously beaten the best Nuke team in the world, Astralis. Their starting T side supported this, with a 9-6 start. To the surprise of everyone watching, Renegades launched an all-out assault, taking 8 of the first 9 rounds of the second half. They eventually cruised to a 16-12 map win in which Jks was again the MVP with 25 kills and 95.3 ADR.

The Renegades have booked their spot in semifinals against all expectations. They started out the New Legends Stage with a 0-2 record and have rallied to win four BO3s in a row.

WE DID IT, BOYS#RNGWIN #BerlinMajor pic.twitter.com/TEPChJrjb9

— Renegades (@Renegades) September 5, 2019

A New Era for CS:GO Majors

For the top-seeded ENCE, this was their last game with Aleksi “Aleksib” Virolainen who was announced to have been benched after the major. The Finnish side was hoping for a last hurrah to follow up on their previous Major success but to no avail.

ENCE loss to Renegades could be the start of an era-defining Major run. Due to how stacked the bottom half of the bracket is, Renegades have a straight shot to the finals. They will face Avangar, winners of a close 2-1 match against Vitality, on Sep. 7. Renegades are still out-seeded 5th to 8th, but enter the semis with all the momentum in the world. Their players are on point and their map pool is expanding.

During the post-game wrap-up, analyst and former Renegades player Chad “SPUNJ” Burchill made a surprise early exit to go celebrate with his boys in a CS:GO moment not soon to be forgotten:

While they are still statistical underdogs, Renegades defeat ENCE. This CS: GO StarLadder Berlin Major showed that anything is possible. We might be witnessing the first-ever Australian Major finals run in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive history. Will they be able to follow the example of Team Liquid?

Credit: Zakaria Almughrabi

Featured Image courtesy of @Renegades