00NATION earn ESL Pro League playoff berth over NIP

The Brazilians upset the odds to qualify for the playoffs despite playing with a stand-in.

00NATION have marched into the ESL Pro League playoffs after reverse sweeping Ninjas in Pyjamas, recovering from a 10-16 loss on Mirage by winning Nuke 16-7 and Ancient 16-12.

Marcelo "⁠coldzera⁠" David gave some insight into how 00NATION got the job done in the final rounds of Ancient in a post-game broadcast interview. "The way how they play Ancient, they play with the AWP on A and k0nfig in window, who always rotates towards B really fast," the Brazilian began. "Our first strat was literally around k0nfig, we didn’t smoke window we just walked mid, smoked doughnut and rushed towards A, because we knew he would rotate toward B.”

He also provided his thoughts on his successful stint leading the team in Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo's absence. "The old 00NATION I tried to IGL, but sometimes when you IGL you need the right pieces," he said. "You need pieces who are gonna give you info, they are going to play the game and not wait for my calls. It’s really hard when you IGL and there is nothing happening on the map, and you need to micromanage everything. With them [the team now] it’s different."

This result was a disaster for Ninjas in Pyjamas as they were heavy favorites coming into the match, and it served as a microcosm of the issues they are currently facing: their offensive halves were atrocious, as they have been all event, they repeatedly made individual errors, and they severely lacked for consistent impact from their stars. This might have been their first tournament with full preparation since adding Kristian "⁠k0nfig⁠" Wienecke, but the Ninjas have a lot of work to do if they are to prove that this roster has long-term prospects.

00NATION can be thrilled with their performance as despite attending this event without their IGL TACO, they managed to make it through to the playoffs, the first time they have ever done so at such a prestigious international LAN. The Ninjas might have been there for the taking but 00NATION still needed to get the job done, and they can now look forward to a playoff campaign.

00NATION’s pick of Mirage opened the series and the Brazilians were utterly overrun on their T half. They did manage to pick up the pistol round, but k0nfig stepped up with a 3k on the force-buy and opened the floodgates for his team. Ninjas in Pyjamas easily repelled a largely pedestrian 00NATION offense time and time again, with the Brazilians offering little in the form of opening kills, the score ending at 12-3 in the favor of the Ninjas.

The second pistol went the way of 00NATION thanks to a Eduardo "⁠dumau⁠" Wolkmer 3k, and this allowed the team to build up a strong economy to give themselves a chance of taking the map. Ninjas in Pyjamas also had joined 00NATION in struggling to find clean entries on the T side, which combined with the economic situation saw the score slip to 12-9, but a slick split onto the A site broke 00NATION’s resistance and led to Ninjas in Pyjamas closing out the map 16-10.

Ninjas in Pyjamas’s map choice of Nuke was next on the docket, with the Ninjas starting on the T side. After losing the pistol Ninjas in Pyjamas were comfortably outclassed in the opening rounds of Nuke, struggling to find frags, let alone win rounds. They grew into things round-by-round and eventually did enough damage to the 00NATION economy to break them with a single round win, which took the score to 1-7. This allowed Ninjas in Pyjamas to put together a few more, but once they got to four 00NATION shut them down again, cruising to a comfortable 11-4 scoreline.

A pistol win went the way of 00NATION to spell trouble for Ninjas in Pyjamas, however the Ninjas did win their force-buy to stay alive in the map for a little longer. Once the guns came up for 00NATION they continued to dominate their European opposition, and they strolled to a 16-7 final score.

The final map of Ancient began with 00NATION on the CT side, and the Brazilians started the game in fine form, running out to a convincing 5-1 lead thanks to their star duo of Bruno "⁠latto⁠" Rebelatto and dumau. Ninjas in Pyjamas did manage to find their feet later in the half, with k0nfig finding opening kills being key to their success, but mistakes such as losing an anti-eco to time and buying an extra AWP unnecessarily limited them to a 7-8 deficit going into the second period.

Ninjas in Pyjamas began the final half of the series with a pistol victory, but after they secured a follow-up round 00NATION began to take control, often times seizing mid and having the freedom to probe the entire map. At 12-9 it seemed 00NATION were about to run away with the game only for Ninjas in Pyjamas to win a force-buy, and this led to a scrappy sequence of rounds that were traded back-and-forth. Eventually 00NATION found the weak point in the defense and they exploited it, running three up-tempo A executes in a row to send themselves to the playoffs, finishing the match 16-12.