Natus Vincere have won the BLAST Premier: Fall Final, beating Team Vitality 2-1 Sunday. They netted themselves $225,000 in prize earnings from the event.
The result seemed a foregone conclusion for Na’Vi, the No. 1 team in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Hot off a win at the PGL Major Stockholm 2021, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev and his team didn’t relent in their unyielding dominance. It’s been event win after event win for the team from the Commonwealth of Independent States, though Vitality showed some resistance.
Map 1 was Mirage where it looked like it would be an easy victory for Na’Vi, but a late rally from Vitality made the major-winners sweat before they could close it out 16-12. Map 2 was Nuke, Na’Vi’s pick. The CIS team was on a 20-game win streak on the map. Vitality put that streak to an end, taking the map 16-6 and bringing the series to Map 3, Inferno. Na’Vi came out with a hunger and even a strong performance from Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut wasn’t enough to help as it went 16-7 against the French.
“We actually lost Nuke to play more in the arena” s1mple joked in the post-match interview. “Thank you everyone for the game today and thanks to everyone watching.”
Vitality, who are slated to undergo roster changes, still performed well at the Fall Final. They fought past the home team favorites in Astralis, who showed up in full force in spite of their new roster. The hard-fought 2-1 battle against the Danes worked against the French, who had to play the grand final later in the day. Even still, the win on Nuke showed they still had something left in the tank. In the end, it wasn’t enough.
In the grand final, the s1mple show was in full force, with the Ukrainian sensation dropping 76 kills over the three maps with a 1.49 HLTV 2.0 rating. The 18-year-old rifling phenom, Valerii “b1t” Vakhovskyi, was a stalwart second.
The grand final drew a peak viewership of 861,000, according to Esports Charts.
With the conclusion of the Fall Final, only one BLAST event remains in the 2021 calendar year — BLAST Premier: World Final. The eight teams competing at the World Final have been locked in. They are: Gambit Esports, Heroic, Natus Vincere, G2 Esports, Team Vitality, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team Liquid and Astralis. The World Final runs from Dec. 14-19, 2021.
