Four time world champions and the epitome of ruthless success within the hyper-competitive world of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Danish org Astralis were left looking pretty red-faced by an onslaught of CT sides by Natus Vincere in what is becoming a pretty intense rivalry between the two biggest teams in the game.
With a fixture against G2 Esports in the semi-finals of IEM Beijing on the line, this fixture had every opportunity of being a worthy match up for the grand final. As it turned out, it was a bit of an anti-climax in reality.
Na’Vi recovered from losing the first four rounds on their map pick to pretty much dominate their Danish opponents on both Overpass and Inferno, racking up 183 kills to Astralis’ 127 over the course of the two maps. The marginal difference in Na’Vi’s 31 assists to Astralis’ 30 shows that there were plenty of moments of action for the Danes to haul themselves into, but ultimately it was a case of the shots landing better and the superstars turning up in more prolific ways for the CIS roster to win the race and book their passage into the next round.
Here’s how Natus Vincere stunned the CS:GO odds and took down the best side Counter-Strike has ever seen.
Overpass
With a map veto that had left Inferno and Nuke on the cards, there really was no overstating just how important it was for Natus Vincere to takeir map pick of Overpass. It was a map pick that seemed to suit Astralis just fine, with their win percentage of 67% dwarfing Na’Vi’s 50% and their wins in four of the first five rounds made it look like this was going to be just another stepping stone for the org in their quest to reclaim top spot in the world.
The warning signs began to illustrate themselves however when S1mple and Perfecto began to find themselves on the server and Na’Vi to edge out the half 7-8.
Na’Vi on the CT side is always a scary prospect no matter the map, but this was an especially potent rampage on the Astralis pick. The CIS core won the 8 points needed for victory in just 10 rounds, breaking the precarious Astralis economy time and time again through a variety of well co-ordinated fakes and purposefully slow ground-out wins.
The story was one of frustration for Astralis on their T side for their part. There was a real sense that they had grown irritated by Na’Vi’s slow dictation of play on their T side, which led to some pretty aggressive pushes into the bombsites that were probably born out of frustration more than being a tactical decision made by either Zonic, Magisk or Gla1ve.
Credit to Na’Vi for getting inside the head of some of the coolest heads in Counter-Strike normally.
Inferno
Moving onto the Astralis pick, Inferno has traditionally been a map over the past three months that the Danes are near unbeatable on. Their 74% win rate on the map is only bettered by Nuke, which is only a couple of percentage points above it, and was once again miles ahead of Na’Vi’s 55%, coming in as the CIS org’s third to worst map overall.
But again the scoreline was exactly the same at the half with Na’Vi playing the slow game and grinding their way to a one point lead at the half at 7-8. Again it was a story of Na’Vi really disrespecting the round timer and Astralis’ rotations by playing fakes and rotations to absolute perfection and really messing with the Danes’ heads.
Three Na’Vi players, S1mple, Electronic and Perfecto would finish the map and game on over 40 kills whereas none of the Astralis players managed to reach that tally. In fact, on the subject of positive kill tallies, no one in the Astralis camp managed to close out the game with a positive kill/death record; Xyp9x came the closest with a fairly disappointing -3, but seeing the two in game leaders of Astralis in Gla1ve and Magisk finishing up as the lowest players on the board with -22 and -15 respectively goes to show just how much of a romp this match up really was in favour of Na’Vi.
