NUTURN beats Version1 to deny All-NA winner’s Final

After already taking down Europe and Japan’s top seeded teams earlier in the tournament, Version1 came into their VCT 2021 - Stage 2 - Masters Reykjavík semi-final against Korean’s NUTURN as the standout favourites as they hoped to make an all-North American winners final tomorrow alongside Sentinels.

NUTURN, meanwhile, came in on the back of a 2-1 victory over the Brazilians of yng Sharks -- a team which was eliminated from the tournament yesterday -- with this without a doubt being their hardest matchup to date.

Starting on V1’s pick of Haven, the map initially was a complete stomp as 12 kills to just four deaths from Tuesday’s MVP of Erik "penny" Penny put his side up all the way to 8-1 before NUTURN called their tactical timeout. So far NUTURN’s lone round win was due to a triple kill from Park "allow" Sang-wook and without these standout individual plays NUTURN were outclassed in every way, once again emphasising NA’s superiority so far at this event.

As the first half neared its close NUTURN finally added to their early count as gunfights finally began to go their way with a quadruple kill from Seo "Suggest" Jae-young ending the half, 9-3.

With the pistol round won to begin Version1’s offensive half they quickly advanced to match point which was secured by a 1v1 victory by Jamal "jammyz" Bangash over Suggest to take their own map pick 13-3 as Jordan "Zellsis" Montemurro secured a 2.57K/D and penny hit a 309 ACS.

Next up was NUTURN’s pick of Ascent which, considering Version1 had already played and won the map twice at this tournament including against Team Liquid, did not bode well for NUTURN’s chances for a comeback.

This looked to be true as V1’s winning streak continued right into map two as Anthony "vanity" Malaspina, jammyz and Effys had a combined kill/death spread of 15-2 over just the first four rounds before NUTURN finally got on the board on the back of an almost flawless attack.

As the Americans went up 7-2 it looked as if another 9-3 half was coming out, however, NUTURN mounted a comeback and kept the map close. A number of successful post-plant holds onto the A site put the score at 7-5 with a single 1v2 clutch being the only thing between them and a tied map.

By round 14 this was remedied as V1 finally lost a pistol round allowing NU to win round 14 flawlessly to reach a 7-7 scoreline with them keeping it tied to 9-9 at which point to many people’s surprise, NUTURN pushed into the lead for the first time this series.

At 9-11 down Vanity won a 1v2 clutch to help close the difference before a 1v2 clutch by Kim "Lakia" Jong-min put the map into overtime.

After this impressive performance from NUTURN Gaming to take it this far, clutches from both effys and Jung "peri" Bum-gi put each team ahead by rounds before a chaotic round 28 ended with NU taking the map, 15-13.

And so, finally, for only the third time this tournament we went onto map three, something both these teams are familiar with as they both also went the distance in their prior games earlier this week. As well as this, the deciding map was Split in only its second play in this event with its only other appearance ending with a 16-14 victory by Liquid over Version1 on Tuesday.

On this map, allow began NU’s defensive half with a triple kill with the Frenzy to take round one which let them take a flawless round two as they started the half off nice and strong for the first time in the series. As the game pressed on NU’s 5-1 lead was then whittled away down to a 6-6 tie which on paper favoured Version1 considering their NU’s worse offensive record.

Nevertheless by round 18 the two teams were neck-and-neck and, despite V1 hitting series point first, the game went into overtime once again making this without a doubt the closest game of the tournament so far. Quite a surprise considering map one’s 13-3 scoreline.

Finally, after the marathon of a matchup, the game came to an end as NUTURN won two rounds running to take the series 3-13, 15-13, 14-12 to knock Version1 into the lower-bracket and to show everybody that Korea can compete with the very best the world has to offer.

In total the very one-sided map one means that despite losing the game, four members of Version1 have higher ratings than NUTURN’s top player of Lakia at 0.99 with Zellsis in fact achieving the top ACS at 232. Nevertheless, NUTURN will now face Sentinels in the winner’s bracket final tomorrow while Version1 will face the victor of Fnatic vs X10 Esports coming up next.