Nobody believed in them - but Ninjas in Pyjamas have just won their first premier tournament in 18 months, defeating Na'Vi in a 2-0 series at the grand finals of DreamHack Masters Malmö.
The game played out over two nailbiting maps, Dust2 and Cobble, both ending with the scores 16-14 in NiP's favour. On both maps, Na'Vi started out on the CT side and were in the lead at halftime, and both times the ninjas fought their way back into the game and took the lead in the final rounds. That makes Ninjas in Pyjamas the first ever DreamHack Masters champions, going home with a $100,000 cheque and their bedst result in ages.
Earlier in the day, Ninjas in Pyjamas defeated their countrymen from Godsent in the semifinals. Godsent turned out to be the breakout team of the tournament. Led by former Fnatic player pronax, this was the first premier international tournament for the team. They were the joker of their group, but made it out and played a thrilling quarterfinals against Mousesports, beating them 2-1.
Na'Vi had taken down French side EnVyUs in the other semifinal. Despite their loss, DreamHack Masters Malmö turned out to be a good tournament for the French team, who made history two weeks ago by becoming the first ever defending Major champions to not reach the top 8 in the following Major championship.
Chinese team TyLoo pulled a massive upset in the group stages by knocking recent Major champions Luminosity Gaming out of the tournament. But their fairy tale ended in the quarterfinals, as they lost 0-2 to Na'Vi. But we'll probably see them again in a premier international tournament soon enough.
Polish side Virtus.Pro showed that despite doing terribly at online tournaments, they still show up strong at offline events. Their 0-2 defeat to Ninjas in Pyjamas in the quarterfinals late Saturday evening probably stings a little less now that they proved themselves to be the best team at Malmö.