This past weekend we had CIS team Natus Vincere grabbing the win at IEM XVI Cologne. Here’s how it all went down:
Natus Vincere win IEM XVI Cologne – How did they do it?
Due to their results in the Road to Cologne EU event, the team was automatically qualified to the main event. Here, they got placed in group B pairing up with teams like, Heroic, FaZe Clan, FURIA Esports and many others.
Group Stage
Their first match-up was against the Renegades. Surprisingly, Renegades got the first map win, however NAVI came back stronger in the following maps. After that we had a classic match-up between NAVI and Team Vitality. Much like their best of 3 prior, Vitality won map 1 (Overpass) but Natus Vincere clutched up in the final 2 maps. With these 2 wins, NAVI qualified to the playoffs, but they still had to play out the third round to determine where they will be placed in the bracket. In this stage, they took on Astralis and beat them 2-1 to get redirected into the semifinals of the playoffs.
Playoffs
Here, they first took on the newly revamped FaZe Clan with Olofmeister in the lineup. Despite such a heroic run against Gambit Esports, FaZe weren’t able to replicate their performance, and lost both maps 16-7.
Grand Finals
For their final match of IEM XVI Cologne, Natus Vincere were tasked with taking down G2 Esports. G2 had a splendid run all throughout the event, but it was a surprise to see them arrive at the Grand Final. Here we saw a back and forth series of matches take place, but it was NAVI that was on top in each one of them. Here is how it ended:
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