MAD Lions, BIG, ENCE and fnatic all took victories on the opening day of the last ever DreamHack Open.

Group A kicked off proceedings, with MAD Lions taking on a MOUZ using Chris "⁠chrisJ⁠" de Jong as a stand-in for an unwell Aurimas "⁠Bymas⁠" Pipiras on the A stream.

It ended up being a relatively comfortable day at the office for MAD Lions against the depleted MOUZ as they took the series 2-1, taking their pick of Dust2 16-12 and the decider Mirage 16-8, whilst MOUZ bagged a 16-10 victory on their pick of Nuke.

It was Thomas "⁠TMB⁠" Bundsbæk who did the heavy lifting for the Lions, posting a 1.42 rating across the series, and most impressively a staggering 2.31 rating on Mirage, where he almost dropped 30 kills in the first half. They could also thank Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius for getting them over the line on Dust2, with his 102 ADR topping the scoreboard.

As for MOUZ it was a day to forget, particularly for usual stars Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool and David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský, who both had woeful games on Dust2. Whilst they recovered on Nuke and were the top two rated players on the server, they didn't do enough for their team on Mirage, particularly considering chrisJ only managed to post 4 kills and a 0.23 rating on that map.

Over on the B stream BIG took on GamerLegion, and it was a predictable win for the German squad.

It wasn't by any means plain sailing for Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz and co. as they were made to work hard for their series win, being beaten on their own pick of Overpass 19-16 and having to go all the way to take the decider of Vertigo, 16-14.

It was the aforementioned captain of the German squad, tabseN, who got the heavy lifting done for his team alongside Florian "⁠syrsoN⁠" Rische, rated 1.22 and 1.18 respectively for the series. As for GamerLegion it was a team effort, and they will go into their series on Thursday at 13:30 against a weakened MOUZ with the momentum of a good performance against a top-20 team.

BIG meanwhile earned themselves a meeting with MAD Lions, also taking place on Thursday at 13:30 .

Over in group B we first saw ENCE take on the new-look FORZE, and it was a clean 2-0 for the European squad. FORZE put up some resistance on their own pick of Ancient, but unfortunately it was not quite enough, before ENCE closed out the series with a comfortable victory on Nuke.

The other game in the group was a matchup between fnatic and Spirit, and it was a quick and convincing 2-0 series for the UK squad. Spirit didn't manage to get to double digits in either map with their revamped squad, a disappointing result considering they won three out of four pistol rounds in the series.

fnatic will be encouraged by the performance of Ludvig "⁠Brollan⁠" Brolin on Mirage, the young Swedish rifler posting a 1.97 rating and 119 ADR to top the scoreboard. On Inferno it was a team effort, but Spirit's resistance was marginal on that map.

There wasn't anyone on Spirit who had a good game, but newcomer to the team Robert "⁠Patsi⁠" Isyanov at least showed signs of promise.

The group B results mean we will see ENCE facing off against fnatic on Thursday at 20:00 , whilst FORZE will meet Spirit at 16:45

The standings after day one are as follows: