Natus Vincere prove they can win without s1mple

It seems that we’ve been wrong about Natus Vincere. For years, the CS:GO community assumed that Na’Vi’s success was almost strictly dependent on Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev’s formidable prowess. Without his ingenuity, it was esteemed that Na’Vi would not last a day. But now we know that’s not true.

Of course, Na’Vi’s recent success does not mean that s1mple isn’t as good as we think. In fact, he may be even better than the stats alone indicate, while it’s hard to see his full contribution to the team. What we can say, however, is that Na’Vi have a system that functions independently of s1mple’s skill.

The BLAST Premier: Fall Groups success

At BLAST Premier: Fall Groups 2022, Na’Vi played without s1mple and won group B, defeating G2 Esports, Complexity, and Team Liquid in the process. The last two of these matches finished with one-sided scores: 16-3 and 16-4. Despite their initial defeat against Complexity (9-16), Na’Vi proved to be a formidable team with a great strategy.

The importance of strategy and tactics

CS:GO has been around for 10 years and during this time, some of the best players and teams have pretty much figured out what works and what doesn’t. On every map, there are standard moves that will yield results and mistakes that must be avoided. Weaker teams often heavily rely on individuals to carry them to victory. And that’s because they don’t have solid systems in place and plans for dealing with every possible scenario.

For Natus Vincere, the players have seemingly mastered a system that’s independent of their personal abilities. Their capacity to execute the plan to perfection is still important, but it’s not what wins them games. A Na’Vi player seems to be just a soldier that executes as best as he can, a plan that’s carefully created by whoever is the team’s mastermind. We suspect that s1mple and Andrii “B1ad3” Horodenskyi make most of the strategic decisions.

From time to time, they might be assisted by other members of the team, but it’s clear that the battle plan is mostly crafted by a few people and then taught to the rest. When the match starts, everyone is on the same page. This would explain how Na’Vi were able to bench their IGL, Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhaylov, and get exceptional results immediately after with a completely new player, Viktor “sdy” Orudzhev.

It’s as if they only changed the wheel of a car. As long as the new wheel has the right qualities, it can be integrated into the system and the car will function as if nothing would have changed. This must give Na’Vi’s leadership a lot of confidence in what the team can achieve in the coming years.

Header: Natus Vincere