FACEIT Major Preview

New Legends Stage starts on September 12

The second major of 2018 is just around the corner, and we have prepared a quick preview featuring information on its format, venue and participating teams as well as some interesting statistics of  NAVI performances in Valve-hosted events.

FACEIT Major Venue

The major will be hosted by FACEIT at London's Twickenham stadium and Wembley Arena. It will kick off at Twickenham with the groups of both "New Challengers" and "New Legends" and then move on to Wembley Arena for the playoffs.

Twickenham has the capacity of 82,000 spectators and is the largest rugby stadium in the world, second largest stadium in the UK and fifth in Europe. Wembley Arena is an indoor sports and concert venue which provides seating for 12,500 spectators. It hosted numerous badminton and gymnastics events during the 2012 Olympic Games.

FACEIT Major Format

The format has been changed since last time. The first round of playoffs and groups starting from Round 3 will utilize the Buchholz system. Also, two bottom teams in the groups do not guarantee themselves a place in the "New challengers" phase anymore and will have to go through all rounds of the qualifiers, including minors.

Round 5 of the group stage will feature a bo3 format instead of bo1. Everything else remains the same: the Swiss system bo1 group stage before the fifth round and single elimination, best of 3 playoffs. Eight best teams will secure the status of "Legends", while the teams placing 8th-14 get a slot in the "New challengers" of IEM Katowice 2019.

First-round opponents

NAVI have been seeded against  Astralis, the main favorites for the title.

After coming back from vacations, both teams attended the DreamHack Masters Stockholm and both lost to  North. We fell to the Danes in quarter-finals (0-2) and Astralis were defeated in the finals (1-2). Additionally, because of their unfortunate result in ELEAGUE Boston Major, Astralis had to take part in the New Challengers phase of FACEIT Major. They scored 3 wins against  Spirit,  Rogue and complexity and lost only to  NiP (26-28 on Mirage) and qualified further.

In 2018, we met Astralis three times and so far, the head-to-head record favors us. Astralis won only once, in the DreamHack Masters Marseille grand final, while we prevailed in the StarSeries S4 quarter-finals and ESL One Cologne 2018 semis. Hopefully, this next match will be another successful one for us and get us off to a promising start.

Natus Vincere's Major stats

— NAVI participated in 12 majors, not making it out of the group stage three times, securing top 8 five times, and reaching top 4 and finals two times each.

— NAVI played 70 games at majors, scoring 38 wins and 32 losses.

— Pistol round win and loss statistics are almost even as well – 71-69.

— Edward took part in the biggest number of NAVI matches (68), while  electroNic had the least (8).

— NAVI's most picked map is Inferno (15 games). Cache was picked only once against Team EnVyUs at ESL One Katowice 2015.

— Train has the best winrate (85.7%), with 6 wins and 1 loss. Nuke has the worst one, with 4 losses in 4 games.

—NAVI 's best player statistically is   s1mple (1.24 rating), closely followed by  flamie ( 1.11 rating).