Gfinity Elite Series Australia: Week 1 CS:GO Recap

Along with its sister titles Rocket League and Street Fighter V, the CS:GO division of Gfinity Elite Series Australia’s second season kicked off with the Melbourne ORDER and the Perth Ground Zero battling the two Sydney sides, and Season One basement dwellers Brisbane looking for their second win in Gfinity’s history.

The defending champions Melbourne ORDER comfortably brushed aside the Sydney Roar 16-3 on Inferno. The champs were on-point in all facets, as both aliStair’s hair and Hatz’s rifling were in fine form. The latter provided us an answer to the age-old question of “Who would win: Five Roaring Sydneysiders, or one hatty boi?” INS also had big rounds to close out a dominant T-side start that the Roar couldn’t recover from.

TopguN played a near lone-hand while zorboT may have lived up to the last half of his name a little bit for the red and white side of Sydney. In their defence, the Roar wouldn’t have been walking into the match expecting a win against the ORDER, given that their roster remained intact into Gfinity, and so they’ll take the lessons and look to build from what’s a rough week one draw.

If we thought that series was a curbstomping, the Sydney Chiefs showed us that Sydney had not yet *begun* to disappoint on Inferno with a 16-2 loss at the hands of Perth Ground Zero. These Baby Chiefs don’t yet compare to the LAN stompers of the day-to-day Chiefs roster, with Moey and Iyen looking to bring up some youngsters like JD and prodigy who had some encouraging moments, but overall struggled.

The mix of youth and experience wasn’t enough this time around in the face of a very strong Perth unit led by Void in a starring role and ably backed up by a surging bURNRUOk. In a reversal of fortunes from the first match, the western boys delivered a strong CT half and closed it out emphatically. The pistol round of the second half going West meant that Chiefs just didn’t have enough rounds or enough guns to come back from the disastrous opening half.

 

After two matches where it looked like the strongest performing Sydneysider was Geordie “Mac” McAleer on the caster desk, we moved to a much closer affair between the Melbourne Avant and the Brisbane Deceptors, which went the way of Melbourne, 16-13 on Cache. Avant’s pan1k is probably the biggest name on the server but it was his teammate Ju1ces who put the squeeze on Brisbane early. The teams traded blocks of rounds through the first 10, settling on 5-5 until Melbourne edged the first half narrowly, 8-7.

Pan1k took over through the middle portion of this map, staking his side to a commanding 13-8 lead before the Deceptors would take two of the next three rounds to score themselves a critical tenth round. From 15-11 they would defend map point twice but, in the end, Melbourne put them away for the result. A consolation point for Brisbane is an all-too-familiar theme for them from Season One, but at least 13-16 is an improvement, and they can build from that.

Coming up this week we see two sub squads battle it out with the Melbourne Avant Gaming taking on the Sydney Chiefs, the Roar will look to bounce back against the Perth Sub-Zeroes (heh) with the main squad over at IeSF, and the Deceptors will try and take on what is expected to be Melbourne ORDER’s sub squad.