EPICENTER Major 2019 qualifiers: victory over Team Empire
The first Bo3 of the group stage
NAVI.GG.BET continues its run at EPICENTER Major 2019 qualification. The first rival in the playoffs is 
Team Empire. Format of the match — best of 3.
Yesterday's game day turned out to be extremely intense: in addition to the four matches in the group stage, the “yellow-blacks” played in deciders, where they fell a little short to win the slot at the Major tournament.
Team Empire, in turn, actually escaped the elimination from the qualification, having managed to claim two important victories and thus taking the fifth line of the group stage standings. However, despite not the best performance, the “Imperials” remain very strong rivals, able to show a good game.
The winner of this match will have another match today - against the winner of the pair Virtus.pro and Winstrike Team. The beginning of the second match is scheduled for 18:00.
NAVI.GG.BET
Crystallize
MagicaL
Blizzy.png)
Zayac
SoNNeikO
Team Empire
dream'
Kodos
Maden
sayuw
KingR
Broadcast
Game 1 — Natus Vincere [0:1] Team Empire
NAVI.GG.BET
Crystallize
MagicaL
Blizzy
Zayac
SoNNeikO
Team Empire
dream'
Kodos
Maden
sayuw
KingR
The initial stage of the game turned out to be dead equal for both: both opponents went neck to neck, not getting many advantages from their actions. But the game itself was rather active: in the first 15 minutes, both teams scored 24 kills together.
27 minutes in Team Empire managed to take down the middle lane of our team, but the price was high — 4 heroes. However, the “yellow-blacks” also lost several heroes.
The first game ended 46 minutes in after we lost the last lane. NAVI GG-ed out.
Game 2 — Natus Vincere [1:1] Team Empire
NAVI.GG.BET
Crystallize
MagicaL
Blizzy-
Zayac
-
SoNNeikO
Team Empire
-
dream'
Kodos
Maden
sayuw
KingR
The secoтв game was quite different from the first. Our guys took over the map from the very first minutes, playing very aggressively. As a result, the first 15 minutes of the game were disastrous for Team Empire. Our advantage grew all the way to 11k gold. Such an overwhelming advantage was hard to combat, so the opponent GG-ed out of the game.
Game 3 — Natus Vincere [2:1] Team Empire
NAVI.GG.BET
Crystallize-
MagicaL
-
Blizzy
Zayac-
SoNNeikO
Team Empire
-
dream'
Kodos
Maden
sayuw
KingR
The final game of the series turned out to be incredibly intense. From the very beginning, NAVI tried to seize the advantage — we were 5k gold up by 7 minutes, but this still was anyone's game, and any mistake could be punished hard.
Slowly but surely we increased our advantage, getting kills on different parts of the map. This resulted in us being 15k gold ahead of the opponent as the clock struck 30 minutes. At that point, we were quite comfortable with our position on the map.
The game finished after a prolonged fight near the Radiant base. Lots of buybacks were used by both teams, but ultimately, NAVI managed to kill the core heroes of Empire, and they had nobody to defend the exposed throne. The series goes to {:ua:} NAVI.
