The beginning of the year turned out to be unsuccessful for the new Astralis lineup. The Danish team crashed into the lower bracket of the Funspark ULTI 2021 Finals after a surprise loss to Russia's K23, who are currently ranked 22nd in the world.
The first map was Mirage, chosen by K23. The Russian team gained a slight advantage from the very beginning and, although after switching sides the Danes were able to level the score, in the end this map remained with K23 with a score of 22 – 19. Astralis chose Inferno as the second map and fully demonstrated their ability to control the situation on this map. The Danish team achieved an advantage of 4 – 11 even before the change of sides, and after that the second part of the draw was more of a formality. Astralis chalked up this card with a score of 8 – 16. The outcome of the match was decided on the Overpass map. Both sides made mistakes from time to time, and their strengths looked roughly equal. Despite the fact that at some point Astralis was leading by 13 – 15, she never managed to bring the card to victory. As a result, after two overtimes, K23 won with a score of 19 – 16.
Astralis now have to play an elimination match against fnatic, which will take place on Thursday. And K23, thus, continues its winning streak, which already has 11 matches, and advances to the semi-finals of the upper bracket of the tournament, which will take place on Friday.
