Natus Vincere kicked off their journey at the ELEAGUE Major with a dominating 16-3 victory against mousesports on Cobblestone.



s1mple sees Astralis as one of their biggest threats

After their first match, Aleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev talked to us about the match, Na`Vi's preparation, the format and more:

You had a very comfortable affair on Cobblestone against mousesports, anything you'd like to say about the match?

I just want to say that we played really great like we did in practice, at the bootcamp. We had a lot of confidence against them, we prepared against every team, we're ready to beat anyone.

Talking about the preparation, before the Major it came to light that you as a team had the most hours out of everyone, how much did you actually play as a team and individually?

We had about 22 practice days, 10 days of bootcamp. We woke up at 12, started talking about maps and practiced our communication after playing deathmatch. After this we had like five or six scrims, and after the scrims some went to sleep and me, flamie, GuardiaN and seized, we played FPL and slept for about 5-6 hours. And this we did for the 10 days.

What did you focus on during practice?

I focused on communication and teamplay with the players that I hold sites with, it was the most important thing, especially for me.

What about the map pool, in the past few months your map pool was very poor, with only Overpass being your consistently good map, were you able to fix that in the last few weeks?

Yeah, we just had a good bootcamp, it was great. We just played a lot of maps.

Talking about the teams here, who do you think will be your biggest threats? Any underdogs that could surprise?

I think our biggest threat is going to be Astralis, because they didn't want to practice us, and I'd say SK Gaming even if they have fox and changed a position. Gambit are playing really great right now, at least from practice, and they already won against North.

Was there anyone else that wanted to avoid you in practice?

We didn't play with OpTic, because they were in NA, we didn't play with fnatic or GODSENT, because they didn't search for scrims, I don't know why. And we didn't play against Astralis and mousesports.

You played the Swiss format once before in New York, what do you think it's going to be like for the Major, is it a good system in your opinion?

Yeah, it's a great system, because you have one more chance to go to playoffs. And you always change the opponent, you can't play the same team twice.

You've always played very well at the Majors, especially the last two. In Columbus you placed 3rd-4th, in Cologne you got second place, is it time for you to win one? What would that mean for you?

At the first Major, DreamHack Winter 2014 I placed in quarter-finals, in Columbus semi-final and in Cologne the final. I hope we can show great, beautiful Counter-Strike and prove that we're a good team.