Na’Vi win group C at BLAST Premier Spring Groups

Natus Vincere was a big question mark ahead of BLAST Premier Spring Groups. Without their best player, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev, Na’Vi are certainly not as strong as they used to be six months ago. But that doesn’t mean they can’t perform well in tournaments.

Na’Vi had a tough group at BLAST Premier Spring Groups, facing opponents like G2 Esports and Complexity. Ninjas in Pyjamas were also part of group C.

Na’Vi’s road to victory

Na’Vi started their journey with a 2 – 0 victory over Complexity. On Overpass, both teams played really well and a series of overtime rounds was needed to determine the winner.

The final score was 16 – 14 in favor of Natus Vincere. Despite the amazing performance of EliGE and floppy, who were the best players on the server, Complexity lost.

On the second map, Na’Vi had to make a comeback from 4 – 8. They eventually won 13 – 8 by winning nine consecutive rounds in the second half.

Their best player was jL, followed by w0nderful. If we take into account just the KD score, w0nderful was easily the best player on the server on the second map because he only died 7 times and had 18 frags.

The second match was against G2 Esports. This was supposed to be a tough match and indeed, it was. G2 looked like they were winning on multiple occasions, but b1t and iM were simply amazing.

Both of them finished the match with 58 kills, while w0nderful had 59 and just 37 deaths. The scores were 12 – 16 on Overpass, 13 – 10 on Inferno, and 9 – 13 on Anubis.

Reading comments about “G2 revenge over NAVI” pic.twitter.com/UE9vruULYB

— NAVI (@natusvincere) January 27, 2024

In the Grand Final, Na’Vi faced G2 one more time and won much faster than the first time. The scores were 13 – 9 on Inferno and 13 – 5 on Mirage. The man who carried them to victory was b1t. His 37 – 22 / 1.47 performance was phenomenal and much better than anyone else’s.

With this victory, Na’Vi qualified for BLAST Premier Spring Final. More importantly, they proved to their fans that they can win without s1mple. This was a huge psychological block for everyone working for the organization.

The fear was that s1mple was 50% of the reason why Na’Vi was a top team in Counter-Strike 2. But now we know that the whole roster is strong.

The true test, however, will come at IEM Katowice next week.

Header: Natus Vincere