VCT EMEA League: NaVi and Team Heretics get clean wins in Week 6

Week 6 of the VCT EMEA League has ended, and NaVi and Team Heretics got clean 2-0 wins in their matches against Team Liquid and Giants, respectively. As a result, NaVi secures its qualification to the tournament playoffs, while Team Heretics adds its second victory and remains with hopes of qualifying.

Now there are only two weeks left to define the rest of the qualifiers for the VCT EMEA League playoffs, and all the teams will try to do whatever it takes. In addition, KOI, which has only one win so far, could qualify by winning its three remaining matches.

NaVi crush Team Liquid to seal their qualification for playoffs

Although both games were extremely even, as they ended with a score of 13-11, NaVi managed to have an ideal performance that allowed them to take the sixth victory of the tournament and, thus, seal their qualification to the playoffs.

The NaVi and Team Liquids series was played in Fracture (NaVi) and Bind (Team Liquid).

Fracture

The series started at Fracture, NaVi’s map pick, where both teams showed their cards and how good they were in this tournament. For NaVi, Dmitry “SUYGETSU” Ilyushin performed excellently and finished the map with 147 ADR, 209 ACS, and a 1.12 Rating. While for Liquid, Igor “Redgar” Vlasov (146 ADR, 217 ACS and 1.22 Rating) kept his team’s hopes afloat until the end of the map.

The first half was evenly matched, and thanks to excellent individual plays, they managed to finish with a score of 6-6.

Things remained the same in the second half, as it was pretty much given and taken from the pistol round. However, when the match was 12-11, and it seemed that it would be defined in Overtime, NaVi managed to win the remaining round and took the victory in their map pick by 13-11.

Bind

In Bind, we saw more of the same, but with the difference that, in the course of the map, everything pointed to Team Liquid equalizing the series 1-1. However, NaVi was extremely strong on their defensive side and prevented Liquid from being able to deploy all their offensive power.

Team Liquid started the map very well, thanks to a good defense by Dom “soulcas” Sulcas. As a result, they managed to take a partial victory in the first half by 7-5. Then, at the start of the second half, NaVi won the pistol round again, and Liquid won the second round. However, NaVi found a way to wake up thanks to an immense Pontus “Zyppan” Eek (254 ADR, 395 ACS, and 1.89 Rating) to take the map victory by 13-11.

Team Heretics beat Giants and won the Spanish derby

Team Heretics demonstrated an excellent performance just hours after being announced that Aleksander “zeek” Zygmunt had been benched. As a result, the team’s assistant coach Brandon “weber” Weber, will have to put on the jersey to play for the team for the rest of the season. In the end, Team Heretics took the victory in the Spanish derby against Giants with an excellent score of 2-0 and thus kept alive the hopes of qualifying for the playoffs.

The series was played at Pearl (Giants) and Lotus (Team Heretics).

Pearl

Team Heretics kicked off the Giants map pic, Pearl, demonstrating a power we had not seen throughout the VCT EMEA league. Led by Auni “AvovA” Chahade, they achieved an excellent partial victory in the first half by 9-3.

Then, Giants woke up and tried to hit back by winning six of the first seven rounds played on the attacking side. However, Team Heretics stopped the comeback by winning three consecutive rounds to take the 13-9 victory.

Lotus

We move to Lotus, the Team Heretics map pick, where we see a spectacular match. Unlike the first map, this time it was Giants who started with everything from the hand of Adolfo “Fit1nho” Gallego. The Spaniard managed to avoid each of Team Heretics’ offenses to lead his team to a 7-5 partial victory in the first half.

After that, Giants seemed to seal the map by winning the first three rounds on their attacking side, as a 10-5 score is a tough thing to come back from in the competitive scene. However, Team Heretics does not think the same way, and with Oscar “mixwell” Colocho and weber, the team managed to repel the Giant’s attacks to even the score 12-12 and send the game to Overtime.

Finally, after several rounds in Overtime, Team Heretics took the victory by 16-14 and thus added the second of the tournament.

Header: VCT EMEA