After a full day of play in Katowice, Natus Vincere secured their spot in the playoffs from third place in Group B, winning three out of five matches.



"We are friends again, we're not enemies," says GuardiaN

We sat down with Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács after their last match to find out whether Natus Vincere have solved their issues from DreamHack Masters Las Vegas and what he thought of their performance so far at IEM Katowice:

We should first go back to DreamHack Masters and how you performed there, what did you learn from your losses there?

I think we didn't take anything away from DreamHack Masters, we didn't practice - I mean, we had two maps and it didn't end well - so we just came here like a mix I would say. We played like on basic trust between each other and just on skill, so that's how we played.

Running through the group, the losses to North on Cobblestone and Heroic on Overpass, what went wrong in those matches?

In the first match against North, we had two hours free and I had to go back to the hotel to take a shower because I had a high temperature and I couldn't play the second map, it was pretty hard. We had a two hour break, and always after like two hours you're like sleepy, you're not ready to play, and suddenly we had to play because the matches were fast. So it was unexpected, I mean they played well but we weren't in the game as in the first two games.

Against Heroic, I think they sold us pretty good fakes, we had a chaotic CT side because they were faking well, they were always throwing some grenades and we didn't know where they were going. And the T side for us, we could come back but we made one mistake that cost us the whole money situation. I think we did an execution to A and they were already waiting for us in 4-5 because we didn't do anything on B, so it was a complete read from them. Heroic just played better CS.

Especially beating VP and SK, who were initially expected to go through to playoffs, what do you make of your overall performance in the group going into the quarter-final against Astralis?

I'm happy that we did it. It will be hard tomorrow, because we have to face Astralis, but I would say it was basic CS for us, we just trusted each other. We had a huge talk between the events, we had some problems and I feel like we have some trust between each other again, we are again friends, we're not like enemies. Sometimes that's more than practicing for one month and bootcamping, sometimes trust is more than anything in the game. That's why we did well, of course we made mistakes. Tomorrow if we make more mistakes, then Astralis will crush us. It will be hard, but I hope we will do well.