Heroic secure BLAST Fall Final spot over NAVI

The Danes will not miss the Fall Finals in November on home soil.

HEROIC failed to make it a perfect run through the BLAST Premier Fall Groups bracket as they gave up one map to Natus Vincere in their final series, but were nonetheless undefeated in their quest to secure a spot at the Fall Finals in Copenhagen’s Royal Arena.

While the Danes punched their ticket to the event on home soil, Natus Vincere will now have to go through the group stage’s knockout bracket to try and avoid the Showdown. As Group B's second seed they will play their match on Sunday at 18:30 against the winner of G2 vs. Evil Geniuses.

The qualifying rematch between the two teams, who had previously met in the Group B upper bracket final, started on Mirage and followed on Inferno, Natus Vincere and HEROIC’s picks, respectively. NAVI got up to 5-0 on their pick, even winning a round with lesser weaponry, but were quickly dismantled as HEROIC built up a strong economy on the defense.

From there the Aleksi "⁠Aleksib⁠" Virolainen-led squad only managed to win back-to-back rounds only once and quickly fell behind as Jakob "⁠jabbi⁠" Nygaard ran circles around the defense. The Dane even got a backbreaking three Desert Eagle kills in a 2vs3 situation at 13-11 that would go on to end the map two rounds later.

Natus Vincere didn’t let HEROIC get comfortable early on Inferno, which proved crucial in a map that was on the balance throughout. A very commanding 10 rounds on the CT side at the half gave Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and company for a very comfortable cushion going into the attack.

The map went down to the wire after the switch, but some crucial calls put Natus Vincere on the right side of the scoreboard in the 29th round, and in prime position to close out the map against pistols. Four quick kills by Justinas "⁠jL⁠" Lekavicius in HEROIC’s B site retake attempt put a seal on the Danes’ first map loss at the event.

The decider went to Nuke after HEROIC denied Ancient going through, a map that the European combine have played twice at the BLAST studios, and Natus Vincere removed Overpass, the map which would have been the decider in their first bout at the Fall Groups had it been necessary.

In the end, HEROIC exploited Natus Vincere’s green defenses and lack of automatisms to take an 11-4 lead on the attack. An ever improving Natus Vincere fought tooth and nail to the end, but eventually the gap was too large to bridge despite Mihai "⁠iM⁠" Ivan’s 28 frags in as many rounds and HEROIC secured their Royal Arena berth 16-12.