CIS Success Continues As NAVI And VP Pick Up Opening Wins

Natus Vincere took down Heroic on Ancient and Virtus.pro overcame Vitality on Inferno to join Gambit and Entropiq in the 1-0 group after their initial matches. Two more BO1s are left to be played in the first round of the PGL Major Legends Stage, which will be followed shortly by another set of BO1s.

NAVI relied on big clutch moments to beat Heroic

Natus Vincere ran up a 5-1 lead as their star duo Denis “⁠electronic⁠” Sharipov and Aleksandr “⁠s1mple⁠” Kostyliev got off to a hot start on Ancient, a map both teams have little official matches played on. That showed on the server, too, as Heroic exploited the CIS side’s weaknesses to get back into the game with a 6-1 streak of their own.

Following the switch (8-7), Heroic bagged the pistol and took the lead, but couldn’t build momentum on the CT side as they lost key clutches to Natus Vincere. First Valeriy “⁠B1T⁠” Vakhovskiy stepped up with a 1v2 on B, and then Kirill “⁠Boombl4⁠” Mikhailov grabbed his fourth 1v3 since joining Natus Vincere on A. Both rounds hampered Heroic‘s economy and eased Natus Vincere‘s way to a 16-11 win.

Meanwhile Virtus.pro and Vitality matched up on Inferno, where Dzhami “⁠Jame⁠” Ali‘s team never lost control as CT on their way to a 9-6 half. A pistol loss and economy broken early meant that Vitality were 15-7 down before they even started going on the defenses. With rifles in their hands, the Frenchmen brought the game back to 15-14 but ultimately lost an advantageous final round to drop the opening match.