Natus Vincere have alleviated some pressure by getting their ESL Pro League Season 24 campaign off on the right foot with a decisive 2-0 win over G2 (13-7 Cache, 13-4 Inferno).
It is only the fourth match win of the season — and first in 35 days — for Andrey "B1ad3" Gorodenskiy's men, who had slid to #32 on the VRS after a 9-16th exit at EWC, a 9-12th finish at BLAST Open Porto, and a last-place exit at StarSeries Fall.
That placed them outside the cut-off for an invite to PGL Major Singapore, making results at ESL Pro League Season 24 and PGL Masters Bucharest all-important to ensure the organization wouldn't miss a Major for the first time in its history.
From the outside, pressure has seemed to be mounting on the team after it missed the playoffs at the IEM Cologne Major, came into the second half of the year without making any changes, and has struggled for purchase in its tournament appearances. But Mihai "iM" Ivan says that the team hasn't felt that pressure quite yet.
"Obviously we had a rough start to the season, and I think it looks... overall, in my opinion, it doesn't look that bad because we've had rough starts to the season before," iM said on the broadcast after the match. "And we had this Major [Cologne] that we kind of failed, we played badly and went out, and then this one-month break. Then two or three tournaments, if you count StarLadder, a big tournament, and it was this rough start in the season.
"[...] The way I see it is that, obviously if you watch this statistic that we can be either #5 or #30 or #35, it doesn't matter, because we don't have LAN wins. I do not have any pressure because of that, only because if we are good, or decent enough, we for sure will make the Major no matter what. Even if we lose against G2, or we lose the next game 0-2 for example, we'll have a [match] against a team that we can play, let's say, that we do need to beat.
"And we'd still take 50 or 60 points because we don't have LAN wins, and if you think about this, then you don't have to worry about the Major. Obviously you need to win it, but [you know the LAN wins will come eventually]."
Natus Vincere's map pool has been a talking point since the break, and the team has clearly worked to address that during a month-long break as they picked Cache to start off the series. A slow start (1-5) was quickly put in the rearview as they took over from then on, giving up just two more rounds as they romped to a 13-7 victory off the back of some excellent teamplay.
That carried on to G2's Inferno pick, where Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy, iM, and Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov were nigh-unstoppable as G2's offense crumbled at every turn. Nemanja "huNter-" Kovač had the second-worst map of his career, going 0-11 on the T side and ending the map with a 1-15 K-D and 0.19 rating.
G2
Nemanja 'huNter-' Kovač
Guy 'NertZ' Iluz
Artem 'r1nkle' Moroz
Nikita 'HeavyGod' Martynenko
Matúš 'MATYS' Šimko
Eetu 'sAw' Saha
Nemanja 'huNter-' KovačPast 3 months
Mihai 'iM' IvanPast 3 months
Andrey 'B1ad3' Gorodenskiy
Valeriy 'b1t' VakhovskiyPast 3 months
Natus Vincere
Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen
Mihai 'iM' Ivan
Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy
Ihor 'w0nderful' Zhdanov
Drin 'makazze' Shaqiri
Andrey 'B1ad3' Gorodenskiy
Ihor 'w0nderful' ZhdanovPast 3 months