Over the Halloween weekend, Reason.fe took to Paris for ESWC’s Women’s CS:GO Championship. Ten of the world’s best female Counter-Strike teams gathered in France’s capital city to represent their nations for the chance at a first place prize of $7,000 USD. Following the roster swap of Ant1ka to Team Secret, and the acquisition of Sindi from EYESports, this would be Reason.fe’s first LAN event since the changes.
Reason.fe were given an invitation along with Team Secret, LDLC.female, Millenium Ladies, and Brazil’s Alientech.fe. Four of the five invites would be placed in Group A alongside NA Qualifier winners, Selfless Gaming Female. The group stage would be played in a round-robin Bo1 style with everyone playing everyone.
The first match would be played against France’s Millenium Ladies on Dust 2, with a score of 16:12.
Match #2 would be played against Selfless.fe, who had just lost against Alientech.fe on Overpass. The map picked was Nuke, a pretty unexpected choice. But Reason.fe would fall with a rough score of 9:16. This would put Reason.fe at an overall score of 1-1.
Match #3 would be played against Alientech.fe, who had also just come from a loss, but against Team Secret who had been dominating the entire event. After a very even T-Side on Dust 2, the Reason girls would close out with a victory only allowing one round on CT and closing it out 16:9. Putting them at a 2-1 record.
Their last map was against long time rivals in Team Secret was also played on Dust 2, making 3 of the 4 matches in the group stage on Dust 2. Despite previous results in the group stages on Dust 2, Reason.fe would fall to Team Secret 4:16, ending their group stage run at a record of 2-2, but putting them in the Round of 6 in the playoff bracket.
Due to the round differences, Reason.fe was put in 3rd place, just below Selfless.fe, and placed the girls against Group B’s 2nd place finisher, Team expert. With playoffs being a Bo3, the map picks were Nuke, Train, and Cache; some of the lesser picked maps.
Map 1 on Nuke was quite a turn around performance for Reason.fe, seeing as they lost in groups to Selfless on the same map. While Nuke seems horribly CT sided due to small chokes and easy spots for CT to peek at, expert managed to take 12 rounds at the half, only giving Reason 3 rounds on T side. But Reason’s CT side was just a slight bit stronger, and they won the map with 13 rounds on CT side, giving them a 16:14 victory on Nuke.
Map 2 on Train was another close map with the stronger T-sided team taking the victory, and in this case, it was expert taking the map 16:14. With one map per team, they would play in the decider map, Cache.
The decider map would end up being much more of a challenge than either team expected, going into overtime with an ending map score of 25:21 in favor of Reason.fe. With a 2-1 victory over Team expert, Reason.fe would face Team Secret in the semi-finals.
The semi-finals were played against Team Secret, a team that’s bested Reason.fe for several months and took Ant1ka back in September. With Dust 2, Overpass, and Cache being picked as the maps to be played, Reason.fe was faced with the struggle of facing Team Secret on two maps they have previously been shutdown on. On the backs of zAAz and juliano, Team Secret would take victory 2-0, with map scores of 16:4 on Dust 2, and 16:9 on Overpass. Ending Reason.fe’s run in ESWC, but in a confident 3rd/4th place finish, and $2,000.
