NAVI survive by the skin of their teeth
A series that swung back-and-forth ended with NAVI just about edging out ENCE on Nuke.
NAVI were in cruise control on Ancient and looked certain to complete the 2-0 until a miraculous CT side comeback from ENCE pushed us to Nuke, where it looked for all the world like gla1ve's boys might have done enough to stay alive.
Consistent big rounds from b1t and w0nderful on the T side as well as a resurgence from iM after a slow start was enough to push NAVI over the line and stay alive for another day.
"I'm feeling thank you!" joked birthday boy w0nderful to BLAST.tv. "No but I'm feeling really good, I'm so happy to win this game. It was a hard game".
A clean first map
NAVI blew ENCE away on map one with jL popping off - though in truth, you could pick any NAVI player as the player of the map.
NAVI put up a flawless quintet of rounds on the T side after an impressive CT hold and made the first map a formality, setting up what seemed like it might be a comfortable win.
w0nderful died just five times, while four members of ENCE failed to put up double figure kills. Put simply, this was a rout.
Credit: Michal KonkolENCE's second wind
w0nderful continued to be near-immortal as he died just twice in a swaggering NAVI defence on Ancient.
NAVI repelled ENCE's disjointed attacks eight times in a row to begin the first half, and though ENCE eventually found some joy at the end of the half, their slow start seemed like it would be their downfall.
Down 10-2 at the half, though, ENCE found their groove. A mandatory pistol round followed by a conversion set up ENCE for the most unlikely of comebacks.
When NAVI collected their eleventh, though, it felt impossible. ENCE needed six rounds in a row to equalise the score - but they went two better and won cleanly in regulation from 0-8 and 2-10 down.
"On T side, everything was not working, and for them, everything was working," mused w0nderful. "Of course we made a lot of mistakes, we will fix them".
NertZ found retake kills out of nowhere and shut down everything NAVI tried, before gla1ve set himself up for a nasty triple spraydown in round 24 to finish off a crazy comeback.
"I don't think it matters a lot for us that we lost this map, we will just play map three, okay". Yeah, fair enough we guess.
Credit: Michal KonkolThe momentum swings
It seemed like the pendulum had swung back towards ENCE.
They kicked off Nuke with five unanswered rounds, with dycha showing why he was one of the scariest Nuke players in the world in his pomp for the whole first half.
gla1ve, similarly, is a legendary caller on this map, and it's clear to see why. Though Aleksib topped the charts for NAVI in the first half, gla1ve had isolated iM and punished b1t constantly to collect eight T rounds.
ENCE cleanly won the second pistol and conversion and split the next two rounds to mirror the 11-5 scoreline that NAVI had on map two, before losing eight rounds in a row, just like NAVI did.
That eleventh came courtesy of an outrageous double from Maden, who flew up the vents and sent a homing bullet into the head of one before stealing a rifle and spraying down another.
b1t treated us to some trademark filth as he ripped off two heads towards ramp, and after a weak first half started showing the level that made him one of the most exciting rookies of all time.
"On T side, when we won some rounds it felt like we were going to win this game for sure", w0nderful told BLAST.tv. "I just had the feeling we were going to win".
w0nderful and iM similarly woke up, with the latter finishing 14-15 after a disastrous first half. They teamed up to win a crucial 2v3 after SunPayus obliterated b1t through blue box to give ENCE a two-man advantage.
That round seemed to break ENCE, who found no joy in the force buy rounds and crumbled to the pressure, meaning NAVI do survive to tomorrow.