B1ad3 confirms nipl will play “some maps” at World Final: “We want him to show what he’s capable of”

Natus Vincere have been a top-two team in the world for the past two years, but they stumbled in their IEM Rio Major campaign with a quarter-finals exit at the hands of FURIA. In general, the CIS side have not been at their best since the summer playerbreak.

They arrive in Copenhagen at something of a crossroads, with rumours flying that Viktor “⁠sdy⁠” Orudzhev is not long for the squad, that Andrii “⁠nipl⁠” Kukharskyi will play with the team at BLAST Premier World Final, and that Abay “⁠HObbit⁠” Khasenov will join in the new year.

Head coach Andrey “⁠B1ad3⁠” Gorodenskiy has at least partially confirmed the recent rumours in this interview with HLTV, stating the team will experiment with the roster in the season-ending Abu Dhabi event, with Oleksandr “⁠s1mple⁠” Kostyliev having said the team is already practicing with 17-year-old nipl. In his chat with HLTV B1ad3 also went in-depth on Natus Vincere‘s early Major exit and gave his initial thoughts in the most recent CS:GO update.

Obviously you were one of the favourites to take the trophy in Rio, but ended up losing in the quarter-finals to FURIA. What do you think happened there?

I think we lacked some tournament experience, as I have said before. I think if we would go deeper, of course it was quarter-final already, but for us we didn’t have experience on the big stage for a long time. We played like two best-of-ones and then two best-of-threes, and were getting the tournament vibe and the confidence.

Versus FURIA we actually never had problems before when we were playing, and when you are analysing the match there were some little but crucial mistakes that eventually were affecting the results of the rounds. I think on Mirage there were three or four mistakes and the pressure was very high at that point, so if you speak about the crowd for example, it didn’t have such an affect on the first or second map. It really had an effect at the end of the third map because you feel the pressure of losing the match, and then the crowd becomes even bigger and louder, it’s making the effect even stronger of the pressure. The problem was more in different pieces, different factors, a complex situation, it was not like one big thing. Absolutely one problem is that we had issues after the summer break, we found out that we didn’t play the same CS as before, the system started to be more vulnerable. Also other teams started to play much strong, we see the results in Rio, top-four were not even in the world top-five right? So it was a bunch of factors.

We were playing versus the home team, and FURIA actually played much better than they usually play. I think another day, not on the stage, it would have been a different game in my opinion, but overall I think the pressure is something that was near the red line throughout the whole tournament. You saw so many teams fall. I actually keep analysing this, I think the pattern shows that the pressure was a problem for most teams, even if you speak about the RMRs, Complexity lost to Imperial and they also say it was the pressure. I don’t know how it’s possible because before the pressure was also there in other events, right? In Antwerp, Cologne, everywhere has pressure, but I think this case was a combination, pressure plus better quality of teams, they became stronger. For example for us in Stockholm, we have pressure, but the teams are not good enough to beat us. Here now if you have that pressure and the teams are good enough to struggle with you, to compete, they will beat you. FaZe 0-3, Cloud9 losing, Vitality losing, Heroic losing in the grand-final in that fashion.

On social media s1mple directly referenced an incident where a player was spat at by the crowd. Can you talk at all about that, and maybe more generally about playing in front of a crowd that was very much against you?

I think the same as I answered in the previous question, it was an additional pressure. If the pressure was really high just in terms of results and what is going on like at the end of the third map, at that time the crowd was really important. It’s also a huge boost for FURIA, in that scenario I think it had an effect.

If it pushes you down a bit and lifts them up a bit, it makes a difference?

Yes. For me it was a very interesting experience because the crowd was not the same as before, they were singing the songs all the match, very unique, they were like one big organism trying to hypnotise us like ‘guys you must lose, you must make a mistake’, doing drums really strong. At the end of the match you end up in some kind of different rhythm, I don’t know, but it was a really strange experience. They are trying to destroy your focus, and they’re not giving up, ‘you must lose, you must give up, you must make a mistake’. I know at the end of the match we played not the same CS as we usually play, the mistakes that we did were really unusual.

I think it was the same versus FaZe in the grand-final of Cologne, on the last map in the last three rounds. We would never lose these rounds in a normal game, imagine you are standing on Nuke four A and they are doing an A split, we know how to counter this round but we didn’t. So I think the pressure was the same.

Looking to the future, there have been a lot of rumours about your roster and what it might look like moving forward. There are suggestions that sdy will not play with the squad, that you might use nipl for the World Final, and that HObbit might be coming in next year.

Can you comment at all on those rumours?

We will make all decisions after Abu Dhabi, we are still thinking about what will be. We are also giving more chances to sdy, but we will also use nipl for Abu Dhabi, we want to split the maps. I actually like the idea of it, we had it also before…

Yeah, with flamie and b1t!

Yeah, only on Majors you can’t do this so if you think about it, you can keep doing this after each Major. It’s very interesting, after each Major you can give a chance and experience to an academy player, you can watch how he plays and experiment. This is a competition between players to show up, to show who is better, and I think it’s normal and natural.

It’s normal in other sports isn’t it, where you have people fighting for spots on the team?

Of course, and that’s what we want to do in Abu Dhabi. We want to give nipl some maps and we want him to show up and show what he’s capable of.

Does that change the expectations for the Fall Final and World Final? I know NAVI usually target trophies, but maybe you will focus more on the performances?

I think we will focus on the winning of course, that’s why we are giving only some maps to nipl, and in that case always two maps out of three can be strong maps. You risk a little bit, but you have a backup plan, a third map where everything is fine if nipl cannot show up good in the first maps. Like b1t for example, he was not doing good in his first maps and then he started improving. It takes time.

We are focusing of course on winning, but the main goal for us was winning the Major. For the moment the highest goals are things we didn’t achieve before, like a second grand slam, a second Major, this stuff.

So you are in a building period, building towards those future achievements like a second Major and grand slam?

Yeah.

To bring the interview to an end, have you had a chance to look at the update and what it might mean?

Actually I didn’t have any chance to deeply analyse it, but it’s nothing special maybe, only three changes. Anubis I think is a very good idea, it doesn’t matter that we play Dust2, for me I didn’t have any negative thoughts like ‘oh no’, it’s only good when you have a new map. Some players told me that it’s not balanced yet, like CT side is more OP. The silencer is something I wanted very much to be fixed, nerfed, I think it’s ridiculously overpowered and every time after matches I would look at demos thinking ‘what the heck, this is a broken game’. I’m pretty sure if they would do the change before this Major the result would be different, lots of teams would fall because mechanically you must be at the top level and the silencer doesn’t show that. It doesn’t open the potential of the mechanical aspect of the game, but the M4A4 is something that you must master. This is very important.

The AWP I think is something where theory doesn’t work, you have to practice for one month and see, maybe something will pop up. At the moment I can’t see what happens, I can’t see that there will be a problem with the AWP. Even if the AWP plays aggressive, you will never face five players, you always have a core three players, lurks one or two players, if you do it properly you can reload before you go aggressive. If you are facing the execution on CT side it’s the same, you have support, let’s imagine you are facing A execute on Ancient you can shoot two times and go away to focus on the retake. Maybe on T side in the last seconds it can be a problem, like 30 seconds and you are going to split some bombsite, if there is a problem like you miss something, there could be no time to reload, you must cover the bomb and don’t have the time. In this aspect it can be a problem.

But you need to see it played first before you know for sure?

Yeah, maybe it will be like swoosh you pull out the Deagle and one-shot (laughs).

Like the old-school CZ days!

Yeah (laughs).