Mousesports defeats Natus Vincere to win ICE Challenge 2020

With a 3-1 scoreline in the grand final, mousesports won ICE Challenge 2020 over Natus Vincere, securing their fourth title from the last five tournaments played.

Natus Vincere took the T-side lead on Dust2 after force buys were traded back and forth, thanks to a triple-kill round from electronic. On the favored side of the map, Finn “karrigan” Andersen and co. secured the first three rounds, seeing the map become an open one again. With six out of the first eight rounds going the way of the international roster, mousesports came close to equalizing the tally and finally did so after a 2v2 on B was won by Chris “chrisJ” de Jong and Robin “ropz” Kool. The latter player was crucial for his team, matching electronic’s output (both players finished the game with 30 frags) and helping mousesports take it over the line on their map pick, 16-14.

Egor “flamie” Vasilyev made up for the loss by securing four kills with the AWP in the final round of the half, but they were still just on six rounds before the switch. The scoreline only got worse as mousesports claimed the fourth pistol of the series,  before Natus Vincere were allowed a full buy. The game became messy at that point, as low-buy victories were achieved by both sides, but in the end, David “frozen” Čerňanský’s multikills gave the advantage to mousesports and saw them finish the map convincingly, 16-8.

The clutch inspired mousesports to pick up five out of six rounds and eventually finish the half just 9-6 down. The deficit was brought down to just one round after the European side pulled off a B retake in the pistol, but Natus Vincere didn’t let go of the advantage, constantly finding holes in the defenses. Despite Özgür “woxic” Eker was unable to get into the match mousesports grabbed a couple of rounds as CT, however, s1mple eventually closed out the map, 16-11, by pulling off a 1v2 clutch on A.

As Natus Vincere survived Train, Nuke was on the cards where mousesports continued their pistol round domination, and with the help of a low-buy victory in which chrisJ found three frags, ran away with the early lead. Good rifle work from electronic was crucial to Natus Vincere getting back into the half, but just as they were set to capitalize on mousesports weak economy they lost to an eco and subsequently dropped a 5v2 advantage, ending the half 11-4 down.
flamie and co. were unable to get it going on the CT side of the map, as after the pistol round, karrigan’s team was able to repeatedly get onto the lower bombsite and hold off retake attempts, closing out the series with a 16-9 scoreline on Nuke.

ICE Challenge Champions 🏆

We’re having a BLAST, kicking off our 2020 season by lifting the trophy in London!#ReadyWillingAble pic.twitter.com/R2Z3CY858g

— housesports 🏠 (@mousesports) February 6, 2020