In a post-match interview with Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev, we heard about the game Natus Vincere played against FaZe, how different their opponents were with Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač at the helm, and more.

With back-to-back wins in the group stage, over HellRaisers and FaZe, Natus Vincere are the first team to advance to the semi-finals of EPICENTER 2018, which will be played on Sunday.

Natus Vincere had a much better CT side on Overpass today

To hear more from Natus Vincere, we spoke to flamie following the match, who touched on the economy update which helped them win force-buys on Overpass, as well as their improvements on the map.

Going into this match, obviously both you and FaZe are already in the playoffs, but this win meant you would go directly to the semis, skip one game. Was playing this a bit different than a normal elimination game or a game in a GSL group?

Yeah, we knew that we wouldn't be eliminated from the tournament, but if we win, we can maybe get an easier bracket, be in the semi-final and will have a day off. And it is always nice to be in the semi-final, anything can happen in the quarters. So we were preparing like it was a usual game and we wanted to play Overpass because we lost to HellRaisers, we wanted to see how it will be after we discussed our games yesterday. So we were happy to play on it.

In the veto, you got Train and Overpass. Were you happy with how the veto went?

Yeah, we knew that we are probably going to pick Train and they could pick Mirage or Overpass and they decided to pick Overpass, maybe because we lost to HellRaisers. But we knew that those were the two maps they were going to pick, so we were ready for it.

I'll start with Train, that was a back-and-forth map, in the end you managed to come back. What was the key to that comeback at the end of Train?

The key round was when the round was 12-10 and electronic clutched a 1v3 on our eco. That was a very nice round from him and it broke their economy a bit. After that, we started to play more confident and managed to win the map.

Touching on Overpass, you said you wanted to play it because you lost to HellRaisers, s1mple said that your CT side was shaky... but it wasn't shaky at all now. What was the difference today?

Yesterday we watched three demos on Overpass, two of FaZe and one of our game and we discussed that we need to fix some mistakes on the CT side because a month ago or so Overpass was one of our best maps. Right now, we were not feeling that confidence on the CT side. But we discussed it and everything worked today and I hope it will work more in the future.

Now FaZe's playstyle is maybe more passive than it was before. For example, on Train, they had some executions at 20 seconds, they didn't play like that before Egor "⁠flamie⁠" Vasilyev

After playing against FaZe with NiKo calling, what do you think are the differences between NiKo's FaZe and karrigan's FaZe?

I think they are still maybe using the same strats because the game didn't change a lot. But, now it is maybe more passive than it was before. For example, on Train, they had some executions at 20 seconds, they didn't play like that before, with karrigan calling they were playing faster, I guess.

On Overpass you won both force buys after losing the pistol, that is also with the new economy coming in, so you have more money. Do you think that that played a key difference because you had good buys?