Natus Vincere showed themselves successfully in the match with Astralis, winning two out of three maps from their opponent with a slight advantage. As a result, the Danish team was relegated to the lower bracket of the tournament, where it will soon meet with mousesports to compete for further participation in the competition.
For NAVI fans, this match was especially interesting, since a new player from the team took part in it – Valery "B1T" Vakhovsky. The fact that he would become sixth on the NAVI roster was announced literally a few hours before the match. In the drawing of the first card (Inferno), he replaced Egor “flamie” Vasilyeva.
At first the fight was almost equal. B1T did not perform very well and, despite the efforts of team leader Alexander “s1mple” Kostylev, the Danes managed to retain this map with a score of 14:16. On the second map (Nuke), flamie again took his place in the team. Astralis also made a replacement. However, the balance of power as a result changed in favor of NAVI. Although the Danish team managed to move forward quite confidently at first, achieving a 12: 6 advantage, Natus Vincere were able to turn the tide, mainly thanks to the brilliant actions of s1mple, who carried out a series of successful shots.
The decisive factor was the Dust2 card. As in the previous one, first one team or the other took the lead, but in the end Natus Vincere were able to retain the lead with a minimal advantage (16: 14). Now the team from the CIS will have to play with Vitality – this match will take place on Thursday. NAVI plans to continue to use the expanded roster scheme to train players for specific maps.
