Natus Vincere secured themselves a slot in the StarLadder winner bracket final. After a onesided 2-0 series against Moscow5, the Ukrainians will await the winner of Darer and CLG tomorrow.
Na`Vi 
vs
Moscow5 
Going into the first game, Na`Vi managed to surprise fans and experts yet again, as Puppey took his Shadow Demon to the jungle and started stacking creep camps before farming them comfortably via continued Shadow Poison attacks. An activated Smoke of Deceit marked a key ingredient during the clearance, as it avoided aggression in the first half of the fight. Through this maneouver, Puppey's experience counter reached similar heights to a solo laning hero and was henceforth able to hold the pressured top lane, that LightofHeaven's Prophet had to defend by himself. Constant lane swaps and well-timed aggression lead to a huge lead in kills and towers, which manifested itself in a gold advantage of 5000 after 15 minutes, respectively 12000 at 19 minutes when the game ended. Moscow5's draft lacked disabling spells, which hardened their defence operations substantially, unneccessary single deaths had their impact as well. One could only hope that Na`Vi would choose lesser aggressive pick for the second dance, so their opponent had more time to get into the game.
Moscow5 
vs
Na`Vi 
And so it came, as the second game got off to a much slower start than the first one. Na`Vi had gone for a much more conservative draft featuring two agility carries and applied a lot less early pressure onto the Russians, who took a more active part in the game this time around. Safe in the knowledge that XBOCT's Morphling would carry the game successfully however, Na`Vi let him have the freedom he needed and kept the Russians busy most of the time. This inevitably led to a much more engaging Broodmother by LightofHeaven, who managed to put his stamp on the game, with occasional solo-kills. Split pushes by Na`Vi made life harder for Moscow5 as well whose main focus was getting PGG's Clinkz in place for later phases. An uncontested Roshan fight by Na´Vi around the 25-minute-mark eventually opened up the game, as the first formed up attacks at the second and third tower-row followed shortly. Moscow5, after slowly losing in gold difference, suffered a severe beating and resigned after 30 minutes.
Coming up shortly will be the second semi final, Darer versus CLG in the second StarLadder semi final.
