The CIS giants live to fight another day in the $1 million tournament after a hard-fought victory.
Natus Vincere beat Complexity 2-1 in the first round of the BLAST Premier Global Final lower bracket, setting up a match against the loser of Astralis and G2 on Friday. The international team, who are playing the event with Jakob "JUGi" Hansen as a stand-in, scrapped an overtime win on Mirage, but Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov's men turned things around following an easy win on Nuke and a tight game on Inferno.
The action started on Mirage, the same map that had Complexity picked against Vitality on Wednesday. Benjamin "blameF" Bremer's men dominated the first half and cruised to a 12-3 lead as Natus Vincere's passive approach allowed the Terrorists to get mid control in most of the rounds. The international team, however, made the same mistake in the second half, allowing NAVI to mount a comeback and push the game to overtime.
Complexity won two out of their three CT side rounds in extra time and switched to the T side with a small advantage. They lost their first T side round and came close to losing the second as well, but JUGi won a massive 1v2 clutch with 10 seconds left on the clock. With momentum on their side, they rushed B to win the game.
Natus Vincere displayed a great T side on Nuke and won nine consecutive rounds until JUGi stopped their streak with a beautiful triple kill on the B tunnels, with Complexity winning three more rounds in the half. Although the CIS side lost their first three CT rounds after the break, they regained control once Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev started AWPing and quickly wrapped things up.
On Inferno, Andrey "B1ad3" Gorodenskiy subbed in Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy for Egor "flamie" Vasilyev as usual, but the youngster didn't have much impact in the first half and Natus Vincere were down 8-7 after a lacklustre defensive showing, despite s1mple and Denis "electroNic" Sharipov combining for 26 kills.
NAVI picked themselves up and won the second pistol round, also fending off two force-buys. Complexity still fought back, but then s1mple broke their momentum with a spectacular 1v4 clutch, with b1t winning a 1v2 situation shortly afterwards to steer his side across the finish line.
BLAST Premier Global Final 2020Best of 3K - D | +/- | ADR | Rating 2.0 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | 62 - 50 | +12 | 68.3 | 1.11 |
![]() | 56 - 64 | -8 | 80.5 | 1.02 |
![]() | 49 - 56 | -7 | 64.1 | 0.92 |
![]() | 50 - 69 | -19 | 68.2 | 0.86 |
![]() | 44 - 53 | -9 | 51.3 | 0.86 |
K - D | +/- | ADR | Rating 2.0 | |
---|---|---|---|---|
![]() | 75 - 48 | +27 | 94.1 | 1.40 |
![]() | 70 - 51 | +19 | 78.4 | 1.29 |
![]() | 61 - 57 | +4 | 77.3 | 1.20 |
![]() | 46 - 53 | -7 | 57.8 | 0.93 |
![]() | 12 - 15 | -3 | 39.8 | 0.83 |
![]() | 25 - 38 | -13 | 57.6 | 0.72 |