Natus Vincere beat AVANGAR; punch ticket to playoffs

Natus Vincere are through to IEM Katowice's New Champions Stage after defeating AVANGAR on two maps (16-6 on Dust2, 16-11 on Train).

The second series of the day kicked off on AVANGAR's map pick, Dust2, where the Kazakhstani side secured a 3-0 lead after winning a chaotic T pistol on the back of a 1v3 clutch from Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali. With their economy back on track, however, Natus Vincere kept shutting down AVANGAR, stringing seven rounds together to take control of proceedings.

AVANGAR looked set to win their fourth round, but Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev denied them with a great quad-kill in a 2v5 situation. Aleksei "⁠Qikert⁠" Golubev and co. then finally pulled off another round, but they were immediately reset by Natus Vincere, who saw flamie add an ace to his name, and, from there, went on to take an 11-4 half-time lead.

Even though Jame's men began the second half on the right foot, winning their CT pistol with a clean triple-kill from Bektiyar "⁠fitch⁠" Bahytov, they could not stop Natus Vincere's force-buy in the subsequent round. Qikert and Aidyn "⁠KrizzeN⁠" Turlybekov still found a lifeline for their team with a double and a triple-kill, respectively, but that was in vain, though, as the Ukrainians quickly closed out the map at 16-6.

Natus Vincere started well on their map pick, Train, bagging the first pistol and the following anti-eco while playing as Terrorists. Still, AVANGAR responded in convincing fashion, winning six rounds in a row thanks to a very tight defense.

That was when Natus Vincere came back to life, eventually reducing the deficit to 5-7 after breaking their opponents' economy in the process. Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko's men looked a livelier side from that moment, calmly turning the score around before switching sides, 8-7.

In the second half, AVANGAR picked up their third pistol of the series with a successful B execution, but could not follow that up as Natus Vincere responded with a powerful force-buy, in which Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Ioann "⁠Edward⁠" Sukhariev found a double and a triple-kill, respectively, with the Ukrainians then increasing their lead to 12-8.

In part thanks to Qikert opening up the B bombsite with two beautiful frags, AVANGAR got back on the board with nothing but pistols, which inspired them to win two of the next three rounds, 11-13. Natus Vincere did not back down, however, and, with Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev adding three multi-kills to his name, they finished things off without losing any more rounds.