Aurora opened their StarSeries Fall campaign in Barcelona with a 2-0 win over Natus Vincere, taking Nuke 13-8 and Mirage 13-7. HLTV described it as the biggest win yet for the new lineup assembled under Ashley "ash" Battye. Aurora lost the first four rounds of the series and only 11 more after that.
NAVI made the stronger start on Nuke, where Drin "makazze" Shaqiri, who HLTV noted had struggled for form since the team's Cologne Major exit, led an early push on the A site with multi-kills. Aurora answered with five straight rounds, with Jimi "Jimpphat" Salo playing from lurk positions, and NAVI held only a narrow lead at the half after Valeriy "b1t" Vakhovskiy picked up a secondary AWP. On the CT side Jimpphat, Ali "Wicadia" Haydar Yalçın and Ismailcan "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş held NAVI's offense to a single round.
Mirage was one-sided from the start. Aurora led 9-1 as NAVI left positions unchecked in the mid-rounds, and a pistol-round win took them to match point at 12-3. NAVI took four of the next rounds before Aurora closed the map on a force buy, finished by Damjan "kyxsan" Stoilkovski with a 1v3 clutch using a Tec-9. HLTV noted the scoreline could have been even more lopsided had Aurora converted that 12-3 lead sooner.
NAVI's ranking slide
The defeat added to a poor start to the Fall season for NAVI. According to HLTV, their only three wins since the break came against 3DMAX, The MongolZ and paiN, all of them struggling teams. The loss left NAVI 15th on the live Valve Regional Standings, their lowest placing since the ranking was introduced.
MOUZ had already lost the event's opening match to NRG, and VRS analyst Finn "Mischief" Farrer reported that the two results significantly reduced NAVI's chances of qualifying for the Singapore Major. The result sent NAVI into a lower-bracket elimination match against MOUZ.
