Natus Vincere are back to full strength

Natus Vincere suffered a huge blow in the Autumn of 2023. Their best player, s1mple, decided to stop competing for an undisclosed period of time, essentially leaving the team and forcing them to find a replacement.

Eventually, Na’Vi signed w0nderful and resumed competing in S-tier tournaments, with varying degrees of success. At IEM Sydney, they finished 9^th – 12^th. At BLAST Premier World Final, they finished 3^rd – 4^th. In the PGL Major Copenhagen European Qualifier A, they finished 1^st.

More recently, at BLAST Premier Spring Groups, they defeated Both Ninjas in Pyjamas and G2 Esports, and are now waiting for their opponent in the Grand Final of group C. These results clearly indicate that Na’Vi are a very strong team, even without s1mple.

When he comes back, one of the five players will need to be benched or sold to some other organization. But until then, it’s good to see Na’Vi doing well at the highest competitive level.

Let’s watch how @b1tcs explained to G2 on Overpass that a free 2:0 win could happen only in their dreams.

📽️: https://t.co/3vzalu4YCb#CS2 #navination #BLASTPremier pic.twitter.com/vcOgqlfEK4

— NAVI (@natusvincere) January 24, 2024

Why Na’Vi succeeds

Na’Vi’s roster is led by Aleksib and heavily revolves around two players: b1t and iM. Both of them are exceptional riflers who can do it all: clutch, entry frag, trade, and so on. Perhaps the only thing they’re not great at is AWPing.

At BLAST Premier Spring Groups, Na’Vi started with a win against Complexity. The match was very difficult, as indicated by the scores: 16 – 14 on Overpass and 13 – 8 on Anubis, but after an epic comeback from 4 – 8 and a flawless second half. In this match, almost everyone on Na’Vi’s side had a good score.

The only exception was, uncharacteristically, b1t, who finished the game with an individual score of 26 – 33. However, his ADR was even better than iM’s, despite the 8-kill difference. It’s clear that Na’Vi’s players know how to play together and make sure that when someone dies, someone else can trade or get some form of compensation.

In the second match, against G2 Esports, the battle was even more epic. G2, as expected, played really well. But in a few key rounds, iM, b1t, and w0nderful made all the difference. These players finished the match with very similar scores: 58 – 44, 58 – 46, and 59 – 37.

From the ADR, we can see that w0nderful was allowed the privilege to mostly finish off kills started by iM and b1t. For G2, only m0NESY and NiKo played well. The other three players were completely shut down.

Header: Natus Vincere