NAVI open Cologne campaign with victory over MOUZ

The CIS squad were taken to a decider, but ultimately MOUZ couldn't stay competitive for all three maps.

Natus Vincere completed a 2-1 victory over MOUZ to kick off their campaign in Cologne, winning Nuke 16-12, dropping Mirage 14-16, before taking the decider of Inferno 16-6. This result sends MOUZ into a lower bracket game against HEROIC, whilst Natus Vincere move on to face Ninjas in Pyjamas.

It was Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev who was the standout player for Natus Vincere, and they will need him in top form if they are to build upon their tournament win in Lisbon, however Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov and Valeriy "⁠b1t⁠" Vakhovskiy were the carries on the final map.

As for MOUZ there were decent performances across the board, but their passive approach to the CT sides was punished by Natus Vincere and ultimately made the difference.

MOUZ got off to a strong start on their map pick of Nuke, coming back from a pistol loss to produce a dominating offence built on the backs of David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský and Aurimas "⁠Bymas⁠" Pipiras, some individual heroics from b1t and s1mple netting Natus Vincere a few crucial rounds. The main problem seemed to be Natus Vincere’s struggles holding outside, an uncharacteristically poor half from electroNic key in allowing MOUZ to post a convincing 9-6 half victory.

The CIS giants recovered come the second half, the rest of the squad picking up the slack left by electroNic’s continued underperformance, and similarly to the first half it was the map control in yard that was key to the half. Natus Vincere racked up ten rounds to MOUZ’s three to take their opponent’s map 16-12.

The first half of Mirage was the s1mple show, the superstar AWPer dominating MOUZ with his aggressive, explosive style of play, the highlight of which was an almost casual 1v4 on the A site in a post-plant; the Ukrainian’s play netted his team a 9-6 half win.

The second period was a completely different story, as s1mple went off the boil and MOUZ started to dominate the game, Christopher "⁠dexter⁠" Nong calling a fantastic offence that found the gaps in Natus Vincere’s setups more often than not. Natus Vincere could find no reliable answer, and MOUZ managed to get the map over the line 16-14 to take us to the decider, Inferno.

On Inferno it was electroNic and b1t who started on fire for Natus Vincere, grabbing 22 and 20 kills respectively as they hard carried their team to a convincing 11-4 half victory. Come the second half it appeared MOUZ had run out of steam as they put up little resistance, allowing Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy's team to take a comfortable 16-6 win to close the series.