New-look NaVi defeat Astralis in BLAST opener
Perhaps the most awaited debut of the season, NaVi took a 2-1 victory over BlameF's Astralis in their opener at BLAST Premier Fall Groups.
The match kicked off on Astralis' pick of Ancient, where NaVi started off with a quick haul of 4 with iM showing up in the early rounds. From there, BlameF's IGL chops showed as he led his team to a clean T side half. At the heart of their attack was the star trio of BlameF, Staehr and dev1ce all popping off. Another pistol round win from NaVi kept them in the game, but Astralis closed the map out quickly at 16-8.
Moving to Nuke, the script flipped on its head as NaVi stormed through the Astralis defences to put up a 10-5 half of their own. S1mple showed some of his 2021 forms on the map while jL stepped up alongside him with 20 frags in the map. And they followed it up with a near-flawless CT side to close the map out 16-6.
Over on Overpass, iM popped off to lead NaVi's dominant attack through the Danish defence taking 12 rounds in the half. While Astralis bounced back in the second half thanks to BlameF and b0RUP's early clutches, they eventually fell short as NaVi took the win 16-12.
Broken blockSource: BLAST
A solid debut for the NaVi roster but still a long way to go as their superstar iM needs to find his form regularly. Still despite the loss BlameF's leadership and Staehr's fragging both looked solid for Astralis, and both teams will look to be competitive in the following matches.
Natus VincereAstralis| Natus Vincere |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Oleksandr 's1mple' Kostyliev |
61 - 46 | +15 | 85.5 | 78.4% | 1.28 |
 Aleksi 'Aleksib' Virolainen |
48 - 43 | +5 | 71.6 | 78.4% | 1.10 |
 Justinas 'jL' Lekavicius |
50 - 51 | -1 | 76.2 | 67.6% | 1.09 |
 Mihai 'iM' Ivan |
44 - 52 | -8 | 71.6 | 66.2% | 0.99 |
| Valeriy 'b1t' Vakhovskiy |
41 - 48 | -7 | 63.3 | 63.5% | 0.90 |
| Astralis |
K - D | +/- | ADR | KAST | Rating 2.0 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Benjamin 'blameF' Bremer |
60 - 43 | +17 | 91.8 | 78.4% | 1.34 |
| Nicolai 'device' Reedtz |
58 - 46 | +12 | 82.8 | 63.5% | 1.15 |
| Victor 'Staehr' Staehr |
51 - 51 | +0 | 70.2 | 71.6% | 1.00 |
| Christian 'Buzz' Andersen |
35 - 51 | -16 | 59.9 | 71.6% | 0.84 |
| Johannes 'b0RUP' Borup |
36 - 53 | -17 | 52.9 | 70.3% | 0.81 |
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