Third Time's a Charm: Na’Vi Qualify for the Stockholm Major

DreamLeague Season 11 is the third Major of the season, but for Natus Vincere, it will be their first.

Na’Vi had a rough start of the season. They lost the qualifiers for the Kuala Lumpur Major in the first round of the lower bracket to the team that later on would become Gambit Esports. However, the five Na’Vi players managed to qualify for the DreamLeague Season 10 Minor and had another shot at making it to the Major in Malaysia. They reached the Minor grand finals, but lost it to Tigers and had to sit out the first Major of the season. The Chongqing Major qualifiers format had them eliminated right from the group stages, and the CIS squad didn’t even get an invite to the Bucharest Minor qualifiers. It became a bit scary for the Na’Vi fans when their favorite team didn’t manage to make it out of the open qualifiers for the Minor and didn’t get an invite to the DreamLeague Major qualifiers either.

Nonetheless, on the last few days of the 7.20e patch Na’Vi claimed the first slot from open qualifiers but struggled in the closed qualifiers group stage as 7.21 hit the deck. They finished bottom two in Group A after losing to Gambit and Pango and had to fight in the qualifiers playoffs from the lower bracket rounds. With Andrey “Mag” Chipenko behind them in the coach seat, Na’Vi tinkered a bit their drafts, came with fresh ideas and took revenge over both Gambit and Pango, ending their Major dream, to join in the end Virtus.pro to the Stockholm Major.

Virtus.pro and Na’Vi are the two CIS teams who will travel to DreamLeague Season 11, the Stockholm Major in March and while VP are already technically qualified for TI9 due to their first and second place finishes at the previous two Majors, for Na’Vi, this would be their first chance at grabbing some more Dota Pro Circuit (DPC) points. The LAN portion of the event will take place March 14-24 with 15,000 DPC points on the line and a $1,000,000 prize pool.