Natus Vincere ended the year on the highest of the highs, winning the final tournament of the year – BLAST Premier World Finals 2021. Faltering at the early stages, the CIS squad turned things around the very next day and defeated every team that came their way be it Heroic, G2, Team Vitality or finally Gambit in the Grand Final.
MAP 1 – Mirage – Gambit 16-11 Natus Vincere
Gambit started off well as they had a head start, not needing to play in the Consolidation final as they came from the upper bracket. They took NaVi’s map pick of Mirage comfortably, winning the game 16-11 after taking a decent 9-6 lead in the first half. NaVi kept it close in the second half pistol but a 3v5 in the follow up force buy reinvigorated the Russian squad and they ran away with the game with ‘Ax1le’ outperforming s1mple by a margin.
MAP 2 – Ancient – Gambit 11-16 Natus Vincere
On to Gambit’s pick of Ancient that was termed surprising by coach ‘b1ad3’, NaVi got off to a good start with a 2-0, Gambit fought back but NaVi’s streak of 6 rounds in a row saw them amass 9 CT rounds as the sides changed. S1mple and electronic with 15 CT kills each put them in the driver’s seat.
S1mple continued his tear on the T side as he racked up 11 more kills on the T side. Gambit tried to make it close with 5 CT rounds but ‘boombl4’ out-callled them by a margin leaving them in the dust to make it 16-11.
MAP 3 – Inferno – Gambit 6-16 Natus Vincere
The final battleground for every good series – Inferno was the decider. It was the s1mple show again as him and IGL boombl4 shut the gates to Gambit’s T side attempts. They had a combined 33 kills, with 14 more from perfecto to take a lead of 11-4 into the second half.
NaVi didn’t let up and let Gambit have 2 sporadic rounds as they won the game out comfortably,16-6 thanks to s1mple’s 27-9 and a 1.92 rating on the final map.
BLAST Premier World Final Champions
With this win NaVi take home $500,000 in prize money and another trophy – their 8th off 2021. They secure the title for the best team in the world by a large margin, having won the all important Major, the Intel Grand Slam, BLAST Fall Finals and now finally BLAST World Finals.
They won every LAN they attended in 2021 be it IEM Cologne, PGL Stockholm, BLAST Premier World Finals and BLAST Premier Fall Finals.
MVP for BLAST World Finals
Aleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev once again proved that he’s a cut above the rest as he posted a rating off 1.42 in the tournament a 1.62 rating in the Grand Final to carry his team to a 2-1 victory in the Grand Finals over ‘nafany’ and his men. He won the MVP for his stellar performance throughout as he took home his 8th MVP medal to break the record for most MVPs in a year as well as equalling dev1ce for Most MVPs of all time.
What to expect in the 2022 Season?
This was the last Pro CS tournament of 2021, as teams like Liquid, Vitality, G2 and others look for a rebuild and bounce back stronger in 2022 while NaVi will look to continue their ‘era’ which is well and truly here.
