NAVI Fortnite, Rainbow Six, and Apex Legends: year's recap

Summing up 2020 in Fortnite, Rainbow Six, and Apex Legends

It's time to take a look back at Natus Vincere's performance in Fortnite, Rainbow Six, and Apex Legends. As we remember, the LAN tournaments were canceled because of COVID-19. So how did the results of the online tournaments go?

Fortnite

In the summer, the club announced a return to the popular Battle Royale and signed two players — Daniil "Putrick" Abdrakhmanov and Igor "7tor" Popov.

To the fans of the discipline and to those who follow the CIS scene closely, these names are familiar. Despite their young age, Putrick and 7tor are the strongest players and front-runners. In his fourth season alone, Daniel earned over $ 16,000, surpassing the other CIS players, and Igor's prize money was about $ 7,000.

There are many tournaments in Fortnite, depending on the season and even the time of year. For example, the Daily Trios Cup was held daily in the summer and the Champions Cash Cup once a week. Our players have achieved a certain success in these tournaments: you could often spot them in the top three.

The larger championships are called FNCS and DreamHack Open 2020, which take place about once every two months depending on the schedule. They offer a larger prize pool and, unlike some weekly tournaments, have qualifying stage, semifinals and finals, respectively, divided up over several days or even weeks. 

Some of the recent major achievements at these championships include Putrick's 6th place at the DreamHack in December and 9th place at Trio FNCS in November, 7tor's 17th place at the DreamHack Open in November, and Putrick's 27th place at the same tournament.

At the end of the year, our guys were also among the top 100 players in Europe. This event is undoubtedly a successful end of the year!

Major achievements in 2020

Tournament	Players and places	Prizes
Solo FNCS	7tor, 43rd place	$ 2 000
DreamHack Open 2020 September	Putrick, 51st place	$ 400
FSL BEYOND TRIO	Putrick,  Gambit. Toose and Fury Legendary, 1st place  7tor,  CL. L1nk and Freemok, 3rd place	₽ 25 000 ₽ 10 000
Trio FNCS	Putrick,  Decyptos и  Hen, 9th place	$ 16 500
DreamHack Open 2020 November	Putrick, VP. Kiryache32, 27th place  7tor,  CL. L1nk, 17th place	$ 800 $ 1 800
1M Super Cup	Putrick, VP. Kiryache32, 36th place  7tor,  CL. L1nk, 26th place	$ 650 $ 750
EU Encore	Putrick, VP. Kiryache32 and Fury Legendary, 12th place 7tor, Gambit. Toose and CL. l1nk, 16th place	$ 6 000 $ 3 000
DreamHack Open 2020 December	Putrick, VP. Kiryache32, 6th place	$ 5 800

Apex Legends

For the Natus Vincere Apex Legends team, the year 2020 is a rather ambiguous one. We started as one of the strongest teams in Europe, capable of showing the excellent game at the international level, and sadly enough ended with the failure to qualify for the playoffs of tournaments.

It's hard to say what the main reason was, but we can definitely mention the coronavirus pandemic. So, NAVI had an excellent performance in the qualification stage of the first Major tournament of the season and were already preparing for the main part of the competition, but all the LAN-championships were eventually canceled and the professional scene switched to the online mode.

The results of Natus Vincere during the spring and summer period can hardly be called successful. The team participated in a number of championships but did not make the playoffs of the ALGS Summer Circuit, and its highest achievement was 7th place at ALGS Online #4 — not the most impressive result.

For this reason, in September the team has undergone some changes. Dmitry "Fyzu" Petrov was replaced by Maxim "MaxStrafe" Stadnyuk: the replacement was intended to improve the team's game since Maxim won the ALGS Summer Circuit playoffs with his last team.

Unfortunately, there were no immediate results. The sixth place in PGL Showdown — Europe, not the most successful performance in the fall ALGS tournaments, as well as disagreements within the team, resulted in Kirill "9impulse" Kostiv leaving Natus Vincere.

Hermann "Nesh" Kobrin took the vacant position as standin. With him, the team played the last two months of 2020. However, the departure of 9impulse and the change of in-game roles affected the team's success: the guys were unable to rebuild their game and ended the year without many results. However, as CEO Yevhen Zolotarov said, the Natus Vincere esports club will have a lineup for the discipline early next year, so let's wait for the news about the team's fate.

Rainbow Six Siege

It was quite a difficult year for the Natus Vincere squad in the Ubisoft discipline. It started with the main tournament, Six Invitational 2020, for which our team earned a slot after winning the Pro League season 10. NAVI did not enter the tournament as favorites, but a playoff spot was a distinct possibility.

The tournament, however, ultimately disappointed both the players and the fans. Our guys first lost to SpaceStation Gaming (to be fair, the future world champion), defeated  Rogue, and then in the important match to get out of the group lost to Team SoloMid. The final 9th-12th places — such a result did not suit anyone.

There was growing dissatisfaction within the team as well. First Ben "CTZN" McMillan left the team, then the contract with Ellis "Pie" Peart expired, as a result, NAVI had to find two players for the upcoming season.

Byron "Blurr" Murray and Dimitri "Panix" De Longueau joined the team. The first is a young player eager to win (who played a few games before the return of Jack "Doki" Robertson after his ban). The second is an experienced player capable of becoming a team leader. Alas, the boys finished fourth in the Pro League season 11, and in the European Open Clash charity tournament departed in the semi-finals stage.

However, the roster continued to play without changes, which proved to be a mistake. The team failed to reach its potential before the start of the new tournament, the first stage of the European League. Finishing fifth and failing to qualify for the Six Major, after such results Panix, along with Leon "neLo" Pesic, were benched.

In their place came the already familiar Blurr, as well as young player Joe "Joe" Crowther. The renewed team had to fight in the first season of the UK Ireland Nationals, as well as in the second stage of the European League. It is difficult to take the results of the first championship as an asset (second place), but for Natus Vincere it was more of a training ground.

But in the second stage of the European League, the guys finished only in 5th place. At the same time, our players qualified for the final part of the European League (in January). Meanwhile, the team probably had to play in the Six Invitational 2021 qualifiers to qualify for the world championship.

Unfortunately, these qualifiers were the final games of 2020 for Natus Vincere. Although our team received an invitation to the semi-finals, they lost their first match. The NAVI's opponent was the team Mkers, which eventually earned a slot to the Six Invitational 2021. The world championship will take place without our team.

Right now the team is in the rebuilding phase. We are sure that our players will learn from this year's events and that they will be a force to be reckoned with in 2021.

We hope that next year the Fortnite team will reach even greater heights and that the Rainbow Six and Apex Legends squads will find their game and please their fans with new brilliant performances. We will be looking forward to it! #navination