Natus Vincere have returned to a Big Event semi-final for the first time since winning IEM Atlanta, building on encouraging performances in Bucharest with a deeper run in Beijing.
For Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy, the improvement is reflected in how the team works together inside the server. "Everybody's involved, everybody trying to make solutions, try to be a big part of the team."
Reflecting on Natus Vincere's difficult season, he acknowledged that small details had repeatedly been missing. Their recent victories over Spirit, FURIA and Falcons have made it more enjoyable again.
Natus Vincere will face The MongolZ in the semi-final, but their plans beyond Beijing are already taking shape. Rather than remain in Asia, the team intend to return home for three or four days of rest.
Listen to the interview here
Congratulations on making the semi-finals. How are you feeling right now?
Feeling good. Long time we didn't play playoffs overall, and for us it's important to win and, yeah, feeling good.
And you reached the BLAST Rival Season 1 Final and then won IEM Atlanta. But after that, you went almost six months without another Big Event semi-final. What went wrong during that period, and what's helped you get back to semi-finals again? Has your mentality changed?
To be honest, if you speak about this season overall, it was a tough season for us and if you ask me what reason, hard to explain the reason because eventually we were playing not the best CS what we can and some small details always were lacking. And I would say that we were not playing against bad teams. We were playing always good teams, and we were not losing to some noobs.
But recently we can see that in Bucharest you beat Spirit and FURIA, and FURIA is who went to win the tournament. And here you've beaten Falcons twice. Does it feel like you are finally showing your real level again, and how does that feel after such a difficult period?
Like I said, it's feeling great and on this kind of two last events I'm feeling great because I'm enjoying a lot when we're playing good CS. And for me it's a pleasure when we're playing good like we can play. Everybody's involved, everybody trying to make solutions, try to be a big part of the team, and eventually it's working good.
You will face The MongolZ next, and you haven't played them since EWC and they've changed their lineup since then. And they went like three victory to reach the semi-finals here. Does their form put any extra pressure on you, and what do you expect from that match?
First of all, I would say that we do not put any expectations, and we will prepare as always. We will treat them like a strong team, obviously. And this is semi-finals, kind of a Big Event, so we will do our best to win this game.
You're not playing BLAST Rivals in Hong Kong, and you start a Major in the stage two. What are your plans after Beijing? With so many teams coming to Asia? Will you stay here for boot camp?
We are planning to come back home, rest a couple of days, and eventually, like three, maybe four days we will have. And after we'll have practice online, and we'll fly to boot camp to prepare for Major.
FURIA
Gabriel 'FalleN' Toledo
Yuri 'yuurih' Santos
Mareks 'YEKINDAR' Gaļinskis
Kaike 'KSCERATO' Cerato
Danil 'molodoy' Golubenko
Sid 'sidde' Macedo
Spirit
Dmitry 'sh1ro' Sokolov
Boris 'magixx' Vorobiev
Andrey 'tN1R' Tatarinovich
Myroslav 'zont1x' Plakhotia
Danil 'donk' Kryshkovets
Sergey 'hally' Shavaev
Natus Vincere
Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen
Mihai 'iM' Ivan
Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy
Ihor 'w0nderful' Zhdanov
Drin 'makazze' Shaqiri
Andrey 'B1ad3' Gorodenskiy
The MongolZ
Yesuntumur 'nin9' Gantulga
Garidmagnai 'bLitz' Byambasuren
Sodbayar 'Techno' Munkhbold
Usukhbayar '910' Banzragch
Anarbileg 'cobrazera' Uuganbayar
Erdenedalai 'maaRaa' Bayanbat
Valeriy 'b1t' VakhovskiyPast 3 months
Falcons
Finn 'karrigan' Andersen
Nikola 'NiKo' Kovač
René 'TeSeS' Madsen
Ilya 'm0NESY' Osipov
Maksim 'kyousuke' Lukin
Danny 'zonic' Sørensen