Natus Vincere have defeated fellow favourites, and likely the best team in the world, SK Gaming two maps to none in their quarter-final matchup at Dreamhack Winter BEAT IT. Despite SK failing to take a map from the Ukrainians the second map proved to be one of the most exciting every played in Counter-Strike history.

SK put themselves in position to push matters to a third map over and over throughout the marathon train matchup but Na`Vi, the best train CT team of all time, put on a masterclass of clutch CT train play. The all time great team from Ukraine never led during the first 46 rounds of play, spanning regulation and three overtime sessions, but finally took the lead for the first time in the 47th round and then won the map and the series in the 48th.



Map one - dust2

Map one saw SK taking a risk by taking dust2, perhaps thinking back to their dominating lockdown CT performance vs. Na`Vi in the ESWC final. Na`Vi are known to be very dangerous on the map though, and markeloff came to play. The man who has made many frag movies worth of clips playing CT rail looking catwalk didn't disappoint early as he gave his team some valuable kills to deny SK full entry to A. starix was also on form in B as his intelligent choice of positioning, switching up his spots at key times, meant he got the jump on any pushes there and was able to kill 1-2 many times.

Na`Vi took 12 rounds into the T half and from there SK could never get into the game for real. Na`Vi won their needed 4 rounds after the first 7 of the second half had been played.

Map two - train

Na`Vi are known to be the world's best train team, and the best of all time on the map in my opinion, so SK were facing a challenge to get the series to a third map. Things began very well for the Swedes though as they overcame some great grinding by the Ukrainians early, getting 4 T rounds out of the first 8 played, to make it to a 10:5 CT lead. Switching over Na`Vi got rolling early but then saw rounds creeping into the SK win column. Eventually SK got the game to map point with 10 T rounds played, 15:10 up. Along the way RobbaN had an amazing 1v3 clutch at the inside site, from a round which seemed unwinnable.

Facing five must-win rounds to even make it to overtime the Ukrainians had their work cut out. They did just that though, taking round after round. markeloff was his usual incredible self AWPing as CT, and numerous times gave his team the favourable start to the round or pulled them back in with his sniping. Na`Vi reached 15:15 to force overtime.

Overtimes

For each overtime Na`Vi would start as Terrorists and SK as CTs. Eeach time SK would take two CT rounds and then swap over to find Na`Vi win their own first CT, levelling the series. With both teams needing two to win it was always SK who took the first, taking a lead with one round to go, and then Na`Vi who won the clutch last round to go to another overtime. Even though the Ukrainians never led it wasn't that they weren't in positions to win. On one round Zeus pushed up lower ramp and killed one guy for free, without taking damage, to put Na`Vi in a great position to win the round. Instead it turned into a round win for SK.

Another memorable round came as CT for SK as f0rest hid around 5 train and using incredible movement, the kind only f0rest can pull off so deftly, destroyed four Ukrainians to take the round. markeloff seemingly blew a CT round for Na`Vi as his AWPing opened up the round and got it down to a 1v1. The bomb was planted inside and markeloff was overzealous in trying to simply spam kill GeT_RiGhT, who was able to kill him and keep SK going.

Na`Vi had a T round which was as close as they come go to the Swedes as starix was firing on two CTs, one who was defusing the bomb with his ass hanging out, and despite killing both saw the "bomb has been defused" text flash on his screen the split-second he got the kill on the defuser.

When Na`Vi finally took the lead in the series on the 47th round they kept their clutch skills going and pushed all out and took the last round and the map and series. One of the best trains ever played, perhaps the greatest clutch train performance ever by Na`Vi and an epic end to a series which put reigning Dreamhack champions from the Summer event SK Gaming out of Dreamhack Winter BEAT IT in 5th-8th place.



The Swedes will now be left to wonder if they shouldn't have followed mouz's strategy and lost their game vs. Anexis at the end of group play to instead a spot in the other side of the bracket, where they would have played a fnatic team they haven't lost to in 2011.

The series marked the fourth Bo3 between SK and Na`Vi since the Swedes got Delpan into their lineup, with the overall series tied at 2-2 now. SK won the first Bo3 in the semi-final of Dreamhack Summer, and went on to the title. Na`Vi took the quarter-final at SEC and went on to a runnersup finish. In the ESWC final SK put on a heroic comeback performance to win their first major and deny Na`Vi a fifth straight World Championship victory.