Match Prediction: GamerLegion - Heroic | CS2 (CS:GO)

Welcome back to EGamersWorld.

The celebration of competitive CSGO continues in Riyadh. The second round of confrontations is underway at the biggest commercial tournament of the year.

There are 7 teams left in the race for the top cash prize, which is $400,000. Heroic and GamerLegion are among them.

The teams will play their match in the second round of play-offs. The format of the match will be Bo3 as before.

The winner of the match will advance to the semi-finals, where he will wait for the winner of the ENCE/Cloud9 pair. The loser will leave the championship at the TOP-8 stage.

Let's try to find out which European clubs will progress further on the Gamers8 grid, and who will have to settle for the Top 8.

Let's go.

Heroic Form

Let's open the showdown by analysing Heroic's form. The top Danish club will play in this match as clear favourites.

Bookmakers believe in the unequivocal success of Heroic. The odds for a Danish victory are at 1.1.

It is hard to argue with this state of affairs. Heroic is a top tier team and GamerLegion, with all due respect to their labours, are not even close.

All year long Heroic have barely left the championship pedestal. It all started with BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2023, where Heroic took the top 4.

Then there was IEM Katowice 2023 and an offensive TOP-2. The only spoonful of honey in Heroic's honey barrel was ESL Pro League Season 17, where the Danes didn't rise above TOP-8.

Then Heroic came back and had a streak of great tournaments. It was top-2 at IEM Rio 2023, top-4 BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023 and IEM Dallas 2023.

Before IEM Cologne 2023 Heroic won the BLAST Premier: Spring Final 2023 and were also in the top 3 of the BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2023/.

• Heroic line-up: cadiaN, stavn, TeSeS, sjuush, jabbi.

Heroic have maintained their fighting lineup for over a year. All players have a KD greater than one, but the headliner is stavn, who has 1.13.

Before their performance at Gamers8 Heroic attended another prestigious tournament - IEM Cologne. Being one of the main contenders to win the German tournament, the Danes made it to the play-offs of the competition, but failed to move beyond the first round.

Heroic lost to Astralis in the first round of the play-offs with a score of 0-2.

At Gamers8 they debuted with a match against Falcons. In general, the game ended predictably, but the French gave a fight, especially on the first map (Mirage 22-18 in favour of Heroic). The second map went in Heroic's favour with a score of 16-10.

Heroic mappool

Heroic's best map is Nuke. There are 5 wins and 0 losses.

They like to play Overpass, where they lost only once. In three months on Overpass, they are 5-1.

One of the most frequently played and yet successful maps is Inferno. Heroic has a 9-3 statistic here. It also goes well on Ancient, where Heroic is 3-1 in matches.

The Danes don't play on Anubis.

GamerLegion form

We continue the match analysis with the analysis of GamerLegion's form. In this match the team will play in the status of outsiders.

Bookmakers confirm the backlog of GL. The odds on the victory of the Paris Major finalists are at around 4.3.

After the triumphant Paris Major a GamerLegion gave up in terms of performance. However, they are not weak, otherwise they would look much worse at major tournaments than they do now.

In 2023, GamerLegion didn't show much promise. They played well at local events like Thunderpick Bitcoin Series #2 where they won, CCT West Europe Series #1 where they finished top 2, RES Western European Masters: Spring 2023 where they finished top 2 again.

There was also TOP-1 at Elisa Invitational Winter 2023, but the main achievement happened in May this year. It was then that GamerLegion defied logic and made it to the grand final of BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, where they defeated the hosts of the tournament - Vitality.

• GamerLegion lineup: acoR, neaLaN, Keoz, isak, volt.

After a great injury in Paris, GamerLegion lost two of their headliners - siuhy and iM. Newcomers neaLaN and volt are not yet reaching the level of Top 2 Major a, and their KDs are eloquent: 0.64 for the former and 0.78 for the latter.

The first match at IEM Cologne 2023 was against Monte. The Ukrainian club was head to head and shut down their vis-a-vis with a score of 2-0 (16-8 Mirage, 16-11 Overpass).

GamerLegion managed to switch on at the last moment. In the match against TheMongolZ, on the first map GL Ledge were 8-16 up on Mirage, but cameback Inferno (16-8), and closed the series on the dopes with Overpass (19-15).

The International was even more interesting against fnatic. On the first map Vertigo GL lost with the score 5-16, but on Inferno GamerLegion played 16-12, and on Ancient they closed the dopes with the score 19-17.

As a result, IEM Cologne 2023 ended with GL in 8th place. They were knocked out by Cloud9, but the result is a good one considering the lineup change.

At Gamers8 Long Sogpeg were matched against Apeks, the other opener of the Paris Major. Both maps gave GL a serious headache, but after dopes on Mirage and a close fight on Overpass GL made it to the next round.

GamerLegion mappool

The best map GL is Overpass. The team has 6 wins and 2 losses there.

There was also Ancient with 2 wins and 1 loss. Still have Mirage in the pool (57% wins in 7 matches).

On Inferno they are 2-2. Nuke has 1 try and a loss.

Not playing on Anubis and Vertigo.

History of head-to-head meetings

Last time the teams played in BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023. Then the victory was celebrated by GamerLegion.

Predicted result of Heroic vs GamerLegion on Gamers8.

To be honest, this match might not be as one-sided as it seems at first glance. Obviously, the level of the teams is very different and Heroic should move, but the IEM Cologne 2023 trends suggest that the nominal outsiders are highly competitive.

I'm leaning towards a Heroic win, but I wouldn't be surprised if GamerLegion put up a serious fight. It may well happen, considering the first matches of the teams in this championship.

Bottom line: Heroic wins with a score of 2-0.