Top 5 Plays from PGL Stockholm Legends Day 1

From S1mple's lightning-fast AWP, to NiKo's deagle, the Legends stage saw some insane plays right on Day 1. NaVi looked dominant, Astralis almost got 16-0d and G2 returned to form. Here are the top 5 plays from PGL Stockholm Legends Day 1.

Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač, and Desert Eagle - Blaze. Name a more iconic duo. While NiKo's legendary sidearm used to always feature in FaZe Clan Frag Movies, this time they found themselves on the receiving end of the One-Deags. G2's Game against FaZe Clan was a blowout and NiKo's squad handed them their first loss in the Major so far. On Mirage, G2 found themselves on a low buy round. Equipped with only an armorless deagle, NiKo took the round in his own hand. With two long-range kills on A site and a 180 flick headshot, this play was an absolute throwback.

Continuing on the strong streak of form, G2 faced the other 3-0 Challengers team and handed out another defeat to them. Once again NiKo was on the top of the scoreboard. As the first half ended, the Danes had managed to take control of the B site on Ancient, but their round win was denied by a 4k 1v2 Clutch from NiKo made the half as close as possible for G2.

Nicolai 'device' Reedtz, Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussen, and Andreas 'Xyp9x' Højsleth were the longest-standing core in CS:GO history, having played together since 2013. They and by extension Astralis also held a record of never being 16-0d. A record that Astralis almost lost yesterday against Device himself. On Inferno, NIP absolutely dominated Astralis and if it was not for a heroic 1v3 clutch from Philip 'Lucky' Ewald, Astralis would have finally been 16-0d.

Down 12-0, in the 13th round, Astralis got decimated by NIP's A site defense. Lucky's quick rifle trade onto Fredrik 'REZ' Sterner allowed him to get into the site and plant. Then in the 1v2, he used great positioning to win the round out and saved Astralis from being 16-0d at the Major.

The legends stage is here, and so is NaVi. Aleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev is back to his usual antics, getting AWP kills faster than humanly possible. In their opening game, NaVi got what would be a tough opponent for everyone else. But for the best team in the world, Heroic is just another opponent. In the 4th round of the Game, S1mple brought out his big green on the defense. As Heroic ran a quick B execute, S1mple took his sniper and quickly killed 3 attackers rushing him down. His shots fired so fast that even his quick scopes looked like noscopes. Here's the first of many s1mple clips we'll see at this major.

NaVi absolutely dominated their second match against Virtus.Pro. Against S1mple, Valeriy 'B1T' Vakhovskiy and Denis 'electronic' Sharipov all popping off, VP stood no chance and lost the match 16-4. On match point NaVi was down to a 2v4, electronic quickly converted that into a 2v2. Entering the B site, VP took down Ilya 'Perfecto' Zalutskiy and left electronic in a 1v2 19HP clutch. The situation seemed almost impossible to win for electronic but the star rifler just doesn't quit. Getting both kills, he ended the game on 1HP, taking NaVi to a 2-0 record.

In the Astralis vs NIP game, during a technical timeout Linus 'LNZ' Holtäng and Nicolas 'Plopski' Gonzalez Zamora decided to keep themselves warmed up by playing hot potato with a hand warmer. That was quite the contrast compared to Dupreeh's expression. With how big of a blowout the game ended up being, Analyst Duncan "Thorin" Shields aptly remarked that this was the most back and forth we saw in the whole match.

That was our list of Top 5 plays from PGL Stockholm Legends Day 1. Stay tuned to esports.gg to keep up with the PGL Stockholm Major as we continue on in the Legends Stage.