IEM Cologne After talk with 1danne1

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FaZe clan lifts the 2022 IEM Cologne Trophy!

The last significant event of the spring season is now over after a thrilling grand final in the LANXESS Arena between the two best teams in the world.
It was a five-map long series with a nailbiting last map, with Twistzz standing out and having a lot of impact on Nuke.

I think it's fair to now call them the best team in the world, winning Katowice, ESL Pro League Season 15, PGL Major Antwerp and Cologne.

It started with many unexpected results, such as Heroic going out in last place and losing against both NIP & MOUZ. We will have to wait and see how Heroic develops after the summer break since Jabbi and the Danes didn't accomplish much in Germany. On the other side, we saw Liquid reach quarters with a new face on the team. Having YEKINDAR on the team raised many questions, and we'll have to wait and see if he stays there or has other plans for his future. YEKINDAR finished the event with an overall rating of 1.05. Their path took a turn in the quarters, though, losing to the Spaniards of Movistar Riders. Who continued their run after a fantastic performance in front of their home crowd in Valencia.

Fun facts!

• s1mple claims the MVP award
• Zyw0O with the highest rating of 1.31 despite going out at a 9-12th place
• High-ranked teams such as Cloud9, G2, Vitality, Heroic & ENCE went out early
• Movistar kept their momentum from Valencia and reached semis
• Inferno was the only map where the Terrorist side was the better side
• The most popular map was Nuke, being played 14 times

IEM Cologne Fantasy

Talking fantasy, I had a good feeling going into the play-ins. Since all the teams and players played the same day, I thought getting the cheapest player on the bench was an obvious choice. I could spend a lot of money getting star players such as stavn, BlameF & ZywOo. The rest of my team consisted of dupreeh, Jame & fnx, with the last one mentioned sitting on the bench. I picked Jame because of his low price tag of 143$, and as I believed, he became my most valuable pick giving me 31,9 points. I used my C booster on BlameF every match I could since he always delivers, and it paid off this time as well. When the play-ins ended, we were many people in the top 50s that almost had the same amount of points. I now knew I had to get better results in the group stage.

S1mple, interz, sh1ro, broky, Jame & cadiaN were the ones to help me reach my goals. With C on sh1ro, I thought that nothing could go wrong. Little did I know, Heroic had an abysmal performance, and therefore, my cadiaN pick became my worst one. I sold him and tried to find the best replacement possible to receive points. Here, I made my biggest mistake, making me fall behind. I bought nafany because I believed Cloud9 would have an easy way through their lower bracket, but here they lost to a new-looking Team Liquid where YEKINDAR, the power machine, plew through all of my three Cloud9 players that now were out of the tournament.

I sat in a terrible spot with the playoffs knocking on the door. I had one sell token left, so I thought I would still make the best of it. Since I believed in a FaZe vs NaVi final, I picked two from each team. I also chose BlameF to use one game with the C booster on but left 20$ in the bank to replace him with s1mple in the semis. This was a great idea, helping me climb the leaderboard significantly. With this recovery, I at least finished in 20th place out of 320 participants. Overall, I'm happy with my fantasy run at IEM Cologne.

I believe I had the right mindset and vision to get to the top but fell too hard on my Cloud9 players.

The winners of IEM Cologne Fantasy

I first saw g0dead in 2022 ESL Pro League Season 15, when I held first place for a long time. Suddenly, after the event's last match, there was this guy g0dead in the first place instead. This guy has a hard gambling strategy, selling two players and going all in with four players from the same team at the right time. He also did this in Cologne, selling electronic & huNter- to get oSee & EliGE. Most of his team now consisted of Team Liquid players who went through the Lower Bracket, defeating 00Nation, Cloud9 and FURIA.

Thanks to this, he got a considerable lead, making him win the whole event in the end with an astonishing 562,3 points.

-1danne1