Natus Vincere secured a place in the IEM Cologne playoffs with a convincing victory over the Swedish NIP on July 8. Alexander's team "s1mple" Kostylev and Victor “sdy” Orudzheva demonstrated a brilliant result, not allowing her opponent to score double-digit points on either of the two maps.
On Overpass, the advantage of the CIS team was overwhelming already at the start: Natus Vincere won ten rounds in a row. After this, the Swedish team managed to carry out several attacks, but soon after switching sides, the map remained with NAVI with a score of 16 – 3. The undisputed stars of this part of the match were s1mple and sdy, who managed to hit the enemy 18 and 17 times respectively. On Nuke, Natus Vincere also immediately took the lead, but the opponent managed to close the gap several times, and at some point the score was 8 – 7. However, after switching sides, the efforts of s1mple and Perfecto finally decided the fate of the match. Successful defense of the opponent did not allow the Swedes to win any more rounds, and the final score on this map was 16 – 7.
Thus, Natus Vincere advances to at least the quarterfinals of the tournament. Her next match in the group stage will be against Movistar Riders, who defeated Vitality. For NIP, the struggle for the opportunity to continue participating in the tournament is not over yet. The team moves to the lower bracket of the tournament, and will face G2 on July 9.
