On Wednesday, NAVI played its first match in Group D at ESL Pro League Season 15, defeating the Polish AGO. Moreover, despite the fact that the outcome of the match was decided on two maps, the drawing of the second of them dragged on for several dozen rounds.
The first map of the match was Dust2, and on it Natus Vincere immediately gained an overwhelming advantage, despite the unfavorable circumstances that the players faced – in-game leader Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov was forced to miss this match due to a positive test for coronavirus, and his replacement Daniil “headtr1ck” Valitov took part in the game while in isolation, separately from the other participants. AGO managed to win only one round, and as a result, the map ended with a score of 16 – 1.
However, the situation changed on Mirage, and the fight for this map became the longest in history for major LAN events. AGO managed to win several rounds in a row from the very beginning, and after that the initiative passed from one team to another several times. AGO was the first to reach match point with a score of 15 – 13, but the Poles were unable to realize their advantage. Natus Vincere ended the match only after 7 more overtimes and a total of more than 70 rounds. The highest performance was demonstrated by s1mple, who scored 64 kills.
After the match, B1lad3 explained that the match took so long mainly due to the participation of a replacement player with whom the team did not have enough practice.
