The defending champions NRG NRG North America Rank #2 keiko Georgio Sanassy brawk Brock Somerhalder mada Adam Pampuch skuba Logan Jenkins Ethan Ethan Arnold are through to the Champions Shanghai playoffs after a 2-1 victory over Karmine Corp Karmine Corp Europe Rank #4 dos9 Zhumagali Dastan LewN Burak Alkan Avez Hazem Khaled SUYGETSU Dmitry Ilyushin N4RRATE Marshall Massey in the Group D winner's match.

Prior to the match, both teams achieved comfortable opening wins over Nongshim RedForce Nongshim RedForce Korea Rank #1 WoohyuN Moon Woo-hyun (문우현) Xross Jeonghwan (정환) Rb Goo Sang-min (구상민) Francis Kim Mu-bin (김무빈) Dambi Lee Hyuk-kyu (이혁규) Ivy Park Sung-hyeon (박성현) and Xi Lai Gaming Xi Lai Gaming China Rank #3 WsLeo Huang Pinwei (黄品维) Sharks Qiu Ge (邱戈) Lysoar Liang Youhao (梁优好) happywei Deng Minwei (邓闵维) respectively. The series saw both teams take their map picks; KC took Ascent, while NRG answered back on Summit and took the decider of Haven.

Starting off on Ascent, KC fired the first shot with a 7-1 start on their attack. Despite the traditionally defensive nature of the map, NRG struggled to stop KC's advances into Mid until bonkar took a timeout, after which they were able to leverage keiko 's Operator and brawk 's Odin to shut down the sites and recover the half to 7-5.

Unfazed, KC reclaimed control in the second half with a second pistol and a bonus to win out 13-7. SUYGETSU led the defense on Cypher with 12 out of his 19 total kills, finishing the map with a leading 244 ACS and 1.42 rating.

Summit was the closest map of the three. Both teams leaned heavily into the same compositional identities that they previously had in Stage 2, with NRG fielding KAY/O and Brimstone and KC playing Chamber and Viper.

NRG were entirely in control at first, exploiting the A site repeatedly for an 8-4 attack and extending that lead to 10-4 with a 1v3 pistol round from Ethan .

From there, NRG worked their way up to a 12-7 lead. KC made a valiant attempt at a comeback, converting four in a row to make it 12-11 and force both of NRG's timeouts, but a 1v2 from skuba in the final round denied overtime and ensured NRG a 13-11 victory.

The final map was Haven, where KC began with a small 5-3 advantage on their defense; however, NRG soon found a gap on the C site, successfully targeting it four times in a row to take a 7-5 lead at the half.

Like on Summit, NRG continued to pull ahead in the second half, converting a pistol to extend their lead to 11-5. KC once again attempted to mount a comeback but were shut down earlier this time as NRG won out the map 13-9. mada had a standout performance on Neon with a 23/12/8 KDA.

From the Press Room

KC Avez on matching up against Ethan as an in-game leader and general takeaways: “I mean, he's a…different person, so I don't really know how he IGLs, and yeah, this game is gonna give me so much experience, ‘cause it's…a very close game on a big stage, and always these…games give a lot of experience, and I'm pretty sure we're gonna learn from it, everyone, even me.”

NRG mada on performing under pressure: “There is no pressure. We just show up every day to match day, we do what we do in practice, and we play our hearts out.”

NRG bonkar on the team's recent journey and performance: “The journey has been good, I think throughout the year it's been bumpy for us in general, but we have been problem solving a lot together and it's been going very well…I think we just need to keep progressing throughout the tournament. I don't think today was a banger match by any means from any side of the teams, so there's a lot to work on from today.”

Up Next

With this result, NRG earns a break as they move on to the playoff stage, which begins Oct. 7. KC will take on the winner of XLG versus Nongshim in the group decider on Saturday, Oct. 3 for a second chance at securing playoffs.