dignitas win the Group C winners' match, defeating Astralis 16-9 on Cache in a Danish best-of-one brawl.

The winners' match of Group C at DreamHack Masters Malmö was a duel between Astralis and Dignitas, two Danish teams (one elite and one sitting inside of the top ten) looking for an early advance to the playoffs after defeating CSGL and Ninjas in Pyjamas yesterday respectively.

The first pistolround was a strange one to say the least as Astralis managed to plant the bomb at the A-site, pick up most of the kills but Jesper "⁠TENZKI⁠" Plougmann was able to defuse the bomb in the smoke to give Dignitas the round.

Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and his men seemed unfazed as they bought two AK-47's with the plant money, which allowed them to pick up all the necessary kills and turn the game around on the second round, cutting off Dignitas' early momentum and moving ahead to a 3-1 scoreline.

This is dignitas' first win over Astralis in an offline game in 2016

Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke and his team managed to put up a solid defensive game on their next gunround and equalised the score at 3-3, but continuing successful entries gave Astralis another two round lead to put the game at 5-3.

dignitas managed to equalise the game based off of stable defensive set-ups and even did one better, winning five rounds in a row to bring the score to 8-5 before Astralis were able to answer back. After such a first half of round horse-trading the score ultimately stood at 9-6 in favour of dignitas.

René "⁠cajunb⁠" Borg and Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth teamed up to mow down the dignitas players on the A-site on the second pistolround, an effort which gave Astralis the economy and the momentum to equalise the score at 9-9 in the second half.

However, Mathias "⁠MSL⁠" Lauridsen reorganised his team into methodical and patient play to give dignitas the first gunround; afterwards, dignitas countered a force-buy from Astralis and moved ahead with a strong economy to a 12-9 score, which forced a tactical pause from Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen and co.

The tactical pause was not enough for Astralis however as, buoyed by k0nfig's fragging, dignitas seized the four remaining rounds and won the game 16-9.

DreamHack Masters Malmö 2016Best of 1 AstralisMatchpage 9 16 13th April 2016 Dignitas 9Cache 16

Dignitas	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Kristian 'k0nfig' Wieneckek0nfig	22 - 19	+3	87.2	1.20
Jesper 'TENZKI' PlougmannTENZKI	18 - 15	+3	85.6	1.18
Mathias 'MSL' LauridsenMSL	18 - 18	0	84.4	1.17
Ruben 'RUBINO' VillarroelRUBINO	16 - 15	+1	79.4	1.13
Markus 'Kjaerbye' KjærbyeKjaerbye	14 - 18	-4	58.6	0.81

Astralis	K - D	+/-	ADR	Rating 2.0
Andreas 'Xyp9x' HøjslethXyp9x	17 - 18	-1	98.8	1.16
Nicolai 'device' Reedtzdevice	19 - 17	+2	73.5	1.08
Finn 'karrigan' Andersenkarrigan	18 - 18	0	75.1	1.01
René 'cajunb' Borgcajunb	17 - 18	-1	64.3	0.91
Peter 'dupreeh' Rasmussendupreeh	14 - 17	-3	66.0	0.83

The final match of the day is the Group D winners' match between Virtus.pro and Tempo Storm to determine the fourth team who will get an early advance to the playoffs on Saturday and thus avoid the decider match; the game kicks off at 21:30 .

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