NAVI dismantle NIP to qualify for playoffs

The first team to qualify for the LANXESS arena is now known, with Natus Vincere breezing past NIP to book their spot in the playoffs. The series was a one sided affair as Natus Vincere did not allowing their opponents to get double digits on either of the maps.

Natus Vincere are now guaranteed a spot in the quarter-final at least and wait for the winner of the match between Movistar Riders and Vitality, who they will battle for a spot in the semi-final.

NIP aren’t out of the tournament yet, as they drop down to the lower bracket to face the victor of the G2 and ENCE game, which will no doubt be a hard test for the Swedes.

Natus Vincere started the series on Overpass in hot form, as they won the first ten rounds of the game, including s1mple‘s 1v3 clutch in the fourth round. The Swedish squad was able to get themselves on the board with a successful A attack in the eleventh round, but collected just one more in the remainder of the half, meaning the score at the interval read 13-2. s1mple and sdy were the star players of the Natus Vincere defense, getting 18 and 17 kills respectively.

A pistol round for the majority Ukrainian side made the final exchanges of the first map a mere formality, as Natus Vincere ran rampant and won the map 16-3.

Next up was Nuke, the pick of Natus Vincere, who started where they left off on Overpass, winning the pistol with s1mple even getting a knife kill on Fredrik “⁠REZ⁠” Sterner. They built on the pistol round by racing to a 5-1 lead, before a 1v2 clutch by Hampus “⁠hampus⁠” Poser got NIP their second. That enabled the Swedes to get within one round of Natus Vincere, but the Ukrainians didn’t allow the scores to get tied up and started to pull away again, with the half time score standing at 8-7 in favor of Natus Vincere.

s1mple and Ilya “⁠Perfecto⁠” Zalutskiy began the second half by combining for a fourth successful pistol round in the series. What followed was once again complete domination by the Natus Vincere CT side, as they put up a flawless defense to close out the series with a 16-7 win on their map pick.