Astralis defeated Liquid on Mirage (16-3) to qualify for the playoffs and brought a close to the ELEAGUE Major Group stage.

Astralis had a good start to the CT side on Mirage with a pistol round win, and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen and Markus "⁠Kjaerbye⁠" Kjærbye locked down the B site shortly after to make the score 4-2.

Liquid picked up another round by taking over the A site and holding off the 3v3 retake, but got reset shortly after by losing the following round. When the North American team managed their next buy, Astralis were able to read their play and stack four players on B, easily shutting down Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella and co.

Astralis finally make it out of the groups

With a 12-3 lead and Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz on 23 kills after the first 15 rounds, the Danish team was confident moving into the second half. Their poise showed in the Terrorist pistol round, when Astralis overwhelmed the A site and took down all defending players without a casualty.

After cleaning up the two following rounds, Astralis took care of the first gun round with ease, pushing the A site with a lot of utility to help them take out the defending players.

ELEAGUE Major 2017Best of 1 LiquidMatchpage 3 16 26th January 2017 Astralis 3Mirage 16

Astralis	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Nicolai 'device' Reedtzdevice	29 - 6	+23	149.3	2.41
Markus 'Kjaerbye' KjærbyeKjaerbye	24 - 7	+17	106.7	1.87
Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussendupreeh	18 - 7	+11	90.9	1.64
Lukas 'gla1ve' Rossandergla1ve	11 - 9	+2	81.4	1.13
Andreas 'Xyp9x' HøjslethXyp9x	6 - 9	-3	44.6	0.80

Liquid	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Nick 'nitr0' Cannellanitr0	7 - 17	-10	49.6	0.65
Spencer 'Hiko' MartinHiko	10 - 18	-8	63.0	0.55
Josh 'jdm64' Marzanojdm64	6 - 16	-10	53.5	0.51
Jacob 'Pimp' WinnechePimp	8 - 18	-10	41.8	0.45
Jonathan 'EliGE' JablonowskiEliGE	7 - 19	-12	56.4	0.41

Current standings:

3W-0L	3W-1L	3W-2L
Virtus.pro	fnatic	North
Natus Vincere	SK	FaZe
	Gambit	Astralis
0W-3L	1W-3L	2W-3L
FlipSid3	OpTic	GODSENT
HellRaisers	MOUZ	Envy
	G2	Liquid

Professeur writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter.