B1ad3: "Our map pool is a little bit weak, and that's why we're picking Inferno"

Natus Vincere's coach sat down to chat about their victory against Outsiders and how the team is progressing with Andrii "⁠npl⁠" Kukharskyi in the lineup.

Natus Vincere came into 2023 with academy graduate npl and debuted at BLAST Spring Groups, where they showed unremarkable form but did just enough to qualify after a nail-biting victory against Complexity. After an unconvincing start to the year, it was tough to place expectations on the Ukrainian roster coming into Katowice.
Natus Vincere showed much-improved performances at the Polish event. They took down Cloud9 and Liquid without losing a map to secure the playoff berth but were no match for the in-form G2 side in the upper-bracket final. Once in the playoffs, they bested Outsiders with another 2-0 victory.

After they qualified for the semi-finals, Andrey "⁠B1ad3⁠" Gorodenskiy sat down with HLTV.org to talk about the win over their regional rivals, npl's improvement, and his outlook on Natus Vincere's semi-final clash versus HEROIC.

Congratulations on making it to the semi-finals. I wanted to ask about this Inferno game, first of all. At the end it got pretty close and it seemed like you were exploiting their passiveness on B even in a couple of disadvantages that you turned around. Can you tell me about the decisions made there in the last few rounds?

I think a lot of decisions were made on-air [on the fly] by electroNic, but overall we had a gameplan to control the map in a really good way, a really comfortable way. I think we were not good enough in terms of understanding where they have a stack, and because of that we had some issues. Sometimes we were really fast, sometimes we forgot about a smoke. You must play for a long time with the same lineup to have a perfect understanding, because, now, there were some mistakes on the T side. On B site, I think for T side it's overpowered to go B site.

Inferno has been a very popular pick for you guys, and even at the beginning when you were trying to introduce npl, that was the map he was stepping it for at first. What are your thoughts on the map overall, as well, after the balance has shifted more towards the T side in recent times?

Yeah, we picked it like four times and we won three times, versus Liquid, versus Cloud9, and here. We lost only to G2, but I think on that day we were a little bit scared of them, or not scared, but not confident enough in some situations. Versus such team you must do everything really confident and at the proper timing. When we lose situations on the map, they take care of this, they control this, and then they take round after round and you go a little bit tilted. Imagine our players, like electroNic, s1mple, they're always on top and some team is winning really confident against them. For us, Inferno is a really good choice because we played it even before npl and it's really important to have good banana. npl doesn't have any huge influence on Inferno banana, so it was easy to pick this map, also he plays his positions on CT and T that he played in NAVI Junior. Yeah, it's just a comfortable map. Now, our map pool is a little bit weak, and that's why we're picking Inferno.

It's been npl's best map with NAVI. Do you think it comes down to him being comfortable in those positions? Why do you think he's not quite as able to put up those numbers on other maps?

I think it's a really easy map to understand, and that's why it's much more comfortable for him to play, if you compare it to Nuke, for example. He didn't play it in NAVI Junior, but he played it a lot in practice and I see how he progresses. I also see the difference between Inferno and Nuke, where he can't understand how macro works, actually. But we did a huge analysis after the last map and I think now he is much better there.

The Heroic matchup has historically been very close for you and lately they've been in really good form. How good do you think are your chances in your current form and how they are looking?

I think we have good chances versus Heroic and even good chances in the grand final, no matter who will be there, because the grand final is a much different type of games and we have players who can shine in grand finals. In terms of Heroic, they're in really good shape. For me, it's kinda similar like G2. They were looking for their game, to find a place among top teams last year, a lot of failures, eventually they changed a player, like G2. I actually realized yesterday for example, somebody made a Tweet that Copenhagen Flames were playing in Antwerp and four of their players are in really good teams, like HooXi and jabbi. I actually forgot that jabbi is from Flames. He's a really good addition. Now, Heroic also - same as G2 - won one event, and this is something that was like the last piece they need, confidence, like 'finally we can be the best team.' They are one step higher now.