Fnatic and ENCE suffer shock early exit from Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers

Counter-Strike

August 30, 2024

Daniel Morris

In Collaboration with Thunderpick

With the first round of play now completed in the second set of EU Qualifiers for the Thunderpick World Championship 2024 now complete, Fnatic and ENCE have become among the initial teams failing to progress from the initial round of 32. With teams like Cloud9, OG and GamerLegion taking part, we’ve seen a ton of Tier 1 teams join in on the action this time around. Here are some of the highlight storylines from the round of 32 of the Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers!

Fnatic and ENCE out first

Credit: Viola Schuldner | © ESL

Of all the teams featuring in the Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers, Fnatic and ENCE are two you’d expect to see make good progress through the gauntlet. However, both have already been eliminated after the first round of play, confirming they won’t be appearing in October’s main event.

Fnatic fell to ECSTATIC, with only blameF really showing up to play for the team. This isn’t the same ECSTATIC roster that qualified for the PGL Major Copenhagen 2024 earlier this year either, making this defeat tough to swallow. However, ENCE’s loss to Young Ninjas might be the final nail in the coffin for this lineup, which hasn’t worked at all of late. Recently, sdy has been the only saving grace for ENCE, but even he struggled to get going in this series. Losing to NIP would be a bad result for ENCE, so losing to NIP’s academy is beyond disastrous.

More favorites make it through

Credit: Stephanie Lindgren | © BLAST

Fnatic disaster aside, the favorites generally prevailed in the round of 32 of the Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers. Cloud9 and GamerLegion made short work of Insilio and EYEBALLERS respectively, while we also saw an OG team spearheaded by ex-Astralis Buzz take down Endpoint without too much trouble.

Although it’s no shock to see these teams win their opening matchups, it’s good to see them avoid complacency. October’s Thunderpick World Championship 2024 will have a total of $850,000 up for grabs, and these are precisely the sort of teams who will fancy their chances at taking a sizable share of that prize pool.

Tier 2 grinders reap rewards

Often, we see the same names pop up in the Tier 2 CS2 esports scene, grinding away online tournaments in the hopes of making a LAN or two. During the round of 32 of the Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers, we saw several of these names appear again, reaping the rewards of their recent efforts with strong early wins.

We’re talking about the likes of TSM, B8, and AMKAL. Teams with players you’ll recognize, now scrapping it out in Tier 2. The all-Danish TSM roster, featuring the likes of Zyphon and valde, took a comfortable series against Sampi, while AMKAL made it look easy against GUN5. B8, now home to npl and headtr1ck, faced a more challenging task against Revenant, although they eventually edged out a 2:1 series.

These are the kinds of teams we love to see do well in the Thunderpick WC 2024 EU Qualifiers. Teams we’ve seen grind, and deserve the chance at a big LAN, with October’s Thunderpick World Championship 2024 fast approaching.