Natus Vincere have clinched the final spot in the playoffs of PGL Masters Bucharest after beating Spirit in a three-map series, picking up landslide wins on Cache (13-2) and Anubis (13-3) on either side of a narrow loss on Dust2 (10-13).
It was only the third win over Spirit in fifteen matches for Natus Vincere, whose last win over Danil "donk" Kryshkovets' side dates back to the group stage of IEM Katowice 2025, and came emphatically as Drin "makazze" Shaqiri and Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov came alive to power their team to victory.
The win also puts Natus Vincere through to the playoffs for the first time since their title-winning campaign at IEM Atlanta, and comes as a big confidence boost after the team endured a miserable start to the Fall season.
Natus Vincere's mind games began in the veto, surprising Spirit with a Cache pick that paid dividends. makazze was in terrifying form as he led a stalwart defense, while Spirit looked lost on the T side with mistake after mistake leaving them destitute.
One of those errors came early in the half as Spirit squandered a 5v3 by walking into a stacked B site despite knowing A was clear, and that became the tone-setter for a miserable, two-round offensive half. Three lost clutches only added further pain to that scoreline, including a final 1v2 by makazze in round 12 that gave Natus Vincere all the momentum they needed to close out after the swap.
Spirit's fortunes didn't improve at the start of Dust2, a pistol win going to waste with Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy's Five-SeveN striking back to win Natus Vincere the force. The Ukrainian rifler added further multi-kills alongside w0nderful and makazze as Natus Vincere started running away with the lead again, and Spirit had to fight tooth and nail to just scrape four rounds by the break.
A lost pistol in the second half could have spelled Spirit's doom, but they answered back with their own force-buy in what became a crucial turning point in the map. A double AWP setup between Dmitry "sh1ro" Sokolov and donk helped close the gap early on before the latter gave it up for an AK, and Natus Vincere could find no avenue in with Boris "magixx" Vorobiev shutting down Middle and Andrey "tN1R" Tatarinovich and sh1ro finding impact everywhere else.
Anubis marked a return to form for Natus Vincere and a mirror of Spirit's woeful offense on Cache, with Mihai "iM" Ivan and makazze disrupting Spirit's defaults in the early gun rounds and w0nderful running rampant with his AWP.
Spirit eventually broke through by exploiting a gap in Middle repeatedly to win three in a row, but even those came by way of two clutches from sh1ro and Myroslav "zont1x" Plakhotia — the latter of which put Spirit's lack of communication on display as zont1x left sh1ro out to dry in a 2v2.
donk was nowhere to be seen, struggling to find any impact alongside the rest of his team and finishing with a 0.41 rating — the fifth-lowest-rated LAN map of his career. Any hopes of a comeback were crushed near the end of the half as w0nderful channeled his inner Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev with an absurd and flashy AWP 4k on 1HP to send Spirit into a spiral, and Natus Vincere wasted no time in closing out their lead after the swap.
Andrey 'tN1R' TatarinovichPast 3 months
Drin 'makazze' ShaqiriPast 3 months
Myroslav 'zont1x' PlakhotiaPast 3 months
Mihai 'iM' IvanPast 3 months
Dmitry 'sh1ro' SokolovPast 3 months
Valeriy 'b1t' VakhovskiyPast 3 months
Boris 'magixx' VorobievPast 3 months
Oleksandr 's1mple' KostylievPast 3 months
Ihor 'w0nderful' ZhdanovPast 3 months
Danil 'donk' KryshkovetsPast 3 months
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