Natus Vincere sends Astralis to Last Chance Stage
A close encounter ended in a NAVI victory.
Natus Vincere takes down Astralis to secure their first win at EPL S17. Starting the series off on Ancient, Astralis came out destroying s1mple and co. With blameF playing lights out on the T side, Natus Vincere found it hard to covert rounds on the CT side. Astralis won the first half 9-6 after some great rounds from the "baiter" himself Benjamin 'blameF' Bremer. As we all thought that Astralis would close out Ancient and just move on to the next map. However, after winning eight rounds in a row on the T side, NAVI went from being behind on their own map pick on the CT side to an insane T side leading the game 14-9 in the later stages of the game. With the momentum in hand, Natus Vincere closed out the game 16-11.
Moving on to Nuke. Once again Astralis came out controlling the game. Winning the first pistol round once again was Astralis as they gained themselves a 2-0 lead. Natus Vincere bounced back and tied the game at 2-2. However, what looked like a Natus Vincere snowball that was about to roll over Astralis, ended in total domination from the Danes who manged to win the first half with a stunning 13-2 lead. Needing only three rounds to close out the game Astralis was quick to end the second map and bring the game into a third and deciding match. The Danes led by Buzz won Overpass 16-3.
To decide the intense and thrilling series, Inferno was the last map to be played. Similar to the first two games of the series, Astralis came out on top in the early stages of the game. A 7-2 lead in favor of Astralis was quickly turned into a bad T side as Natus Vincere managed to fight back and end the first half behind 8-7. Despite Astralis trying their best to win their first series at the event, s1mple was the man to stop the Danes from achieving that. With 33 kills to his name, s1mple took his team to victory on Inferno. The Ukranian devil single-handedly won his team the deciding 16-12 map and the series 2-1.
Astralis - Natus Vincere 1-2 | ESL Pro League Season 17
MVP: s1mple - 1.18 rating / 57-47 K-D / 76.3 ADR
