Astralis began with a powerful Overpass, their own pick, as they got 12 rounds on the T side and had little trouble closing things out on the CT side.

On Mirage it was quite the opposite, Na`Vi started with a 9-1 scoreline as T before Astralis got 13 out of the next 14 rounds for a 14-10 lead. However, Natus Vincere came back with the last six rounds to push the match to Dust2.



Astralis didn't expect Mirage from Na`Vi

There, the first half was a back-and-forth battle, but the Danes put up a strong CT side and overcame Sergey "⁠starix⁠" Ischuk's team at 16-10, 2-1.

After the match, Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander talked to us about Astralis' preparation prior to the match, ran us through some of the most important parts of each map, and tried to pick which team he would have an easier time playing against.

I made this point in the preview and GuardiaN said the same thing in our interview, which is that you didn't really have much information to go off of because Na`Vi only showed their CT side in the groups and you didn't practice each other. How did you approach the preparation for Na`Vi?

We looked at their old demos, especially on Overpass, then we looked at their Dust2 demo against SK and also and old one, we tried to compare them. Everybody did it individually and me and zonic did it together. I think we were pretty prepared for the game against Na`Vi. We didn't prepare Mirage at all, because we thought the wouldn't pick it, and we weren't sure if we were going to play it as the third map.

You already touched on the veto a little, run me through it, were there any major surprises apart from Mirage?

They banned Cache, we knew about that, we banned Cobble, because they looked really good on it in the group stage. They picked Mirage, which surprised us a bit, we picked Overpass, I think it surprised them a bit, I think they thought we'd pick Train, but I think it's because we showed two Train games in the group stage so we decided to pick Overpass, as it's almost as good as our Train. So that's what went through our mind, they removed Train afterwards and we decided to play Dust2 as third, because we haven't played Nuke officially for quite some time, but it's still a good map for us.

You had a pretty convincing performance on Overpass, especially on the Terrorist side where it looked like you surprised Na`Vi. Was there anything specific that you noticed about them and used in the match?

Yeah, we noticed some specific things, but I don't want to talk too much about it, because then people can change up their stuff. But yeah, we did some really good things against their setups I think.

At the start of Mirage it didn't look good at all, as you were down 1-9 but then made a solid half of it, picking up the last five rounds. What was your adaption on the CT side?

I think if we had a good start on the CT side we could've get a lot more rounds, but when we get a bad start on Mirage, we fall a bit apart, and we have to change our style and pick ourselves up a bit. That's what happened, then I won a key clutch I think, a 1v2, which was really important for us, we came back from there.

You were up 14-10 and then they came back with the last six rounds, was it something they did well, or did you make any crucial mistakes?

I think it was my fault that we lost the 5v3 which came to be a 4v2, Kjaerbye tried to plant and died to the player on CT in the last few seconds. I wasn't really sure about the rotations, they were two B and I wanted them to come with me mid instead of going to A through T spawn, because there wasn't much time, only 30 seconds or so. But they went through T spawn, which was a mistake by us, that's why we lost.

In the semi-finals you'll face the winner of fnatic and Gambit, any preference? Who would be the better match-up?

I actually don't know. It's hard to tell, Zeus is an amazing in-game leader and I think I would have an easier time studying the opponent and reading the game against fnatic, because Zeus thinks about all the small things just like myself. But I don't know, because fnatic can be really strong individually, and that could hurt us. It's gonna be an amazing match no matter who wins.