- NaVi defeated the Danish team Astralis 2-1
- It was not an easy game with Astralis putting up an extremely strong resistance on Overpass
- S1mple woke up in the final map to pull his team to victory
NaVi continue to the lower bracket semi-finals of Group D at ESL Pro League Season 17 after narrowly defeating Astralis 2-1.
NaVi Triumph over Astralis
Natus Vincere have begun recovery from their opening loss to FORZE at the ESL Pro League Season 17 after defeating Astralis 2-1. The team now progresses to the lower bracket semi-finals of Group D where they will have to face Chinese-majority team Rare Atom on Friday evening. Meanwhile, Astralis are sent to the last chance brackets where they will need to win three series in a row if they want to stay alive in the tournament.
Despite losing, however, Astralis did not plan to just give out the victory to NaVi. The match was chaotic and stretched out to the full three maps, with the Danes absolutely wiping the floor with the Ukrainian-majority team on the second map, Overpass.
The match started on Ancient, which NaVi won with a comfortable five-round lead. Despite that, it was a chaotic game in which it seemed like Astralis would win because the Danes scored a whole nine rounds as Terrorists in the first half. However, Astralis could not replicate the same show of force once the sides switched, allowing NaVi to quickly surpass them and win the map with a score of 16-11.
Having understood what NaVi was capable of, Astralis were more than motivated to beat their Ukrainian opponents, who picked Overpass as the second map. The Danes took an early lead in large part thanks to Christian “Buzz” Andersen who scored a more than impressive 2.05 rating in the first half. His actions helped his team wipe the floor with NaVi, ending the first half with a score of 13-2. Following this obliteration, NaVi was unable to do anything, scoring just one more round as Astralis quickly wrapped things up 16-3.
With such a devastating loss, viewers were set for an interesting decider on Inferno. NaVi once again started the map on the wrong foot, but as Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev slowly came alive, the Ukrainian team started to slowly regain momentum. His quad-kill and triple-kill in consecutive rounds got NaVi on the board while his rampage at the start of the second half helped his team keep a small but significant advantage. With the score being 13-9, Astralis made one final push in an attempt to overtake their opponents, but they just did not have enough momentum to do so, allowing NaVi to take Inferno 16-12 and the match 2-1. Combining this defeat with the earlier loss Astralis suffered to Spirit, the Danes are being sent to the last chance bracket and are on a course to face ATK. Meanwhile, s1mple and his team advance to the lower bracket semi-finals of Group D at ESL Pro League Season 17.
