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Egor 'flamie' Vasilyev had a chat with HLTV.org following his team's 2-0 victory over Ninjas in Pyjamas.

Natus Vincere had a smooth path to the MLG Columbus Major playoffs after taking down Cloud9 and artis malaysia lucahVirtus.pro convincingly in the group stages.

Today's action saw them grind out a win over Ninjas in Pyjamas, 16-9 on Inferno and 16-10 on Mirage. Afterwards, HLTV.org had a chance to talk to Egor "?flamie?" Vasilyev, who went 47-33 and had a 1.22 rating in the series, about a variety of topics.

Did everything go according to plan in the group stage against Cloud9 and Virtus.pro.
Yes, starix and our analyst created a game plan and we acted on it. I was just there to frag.
Were you satisfied with your performance in those early games?
I was satisfied but not 100%. Today was much better.
On Inferno against NiP today, you guys were up ahead 13-2 but NiP then began to get rounds back-how did you refocus for the game?
We always have a problem to finish games a lot of times but Inferno is not our best map in any case as we're not often playing it in official games. In particular, it's hard for us to play the T-side. But we pulled off some rounds that worked and we managed to win.
You guys had an interesting CT setup that caught my attention-you put one guy on porch roof, one guy under porch, and one guy on the balcony, where did you guys learn that?
It's a round from a team...G2 I believe. We adapted it and it works.
Any thoughts about your performance or the team's overall play on Mirage?
seized played amazingly, I don't remember too much from that map at the moment *laughs*.

flamie favours Luminosity making the grand final

People saw on Reddit that GuardiaN was having his hands stretched before the game, what's the deal with that?
He has a problem with his wrist, like olof does now as well, and like the Dota 2 player Fear from Evil Geniuses. It hurts him a lot sometimes and it's very hard to focus and play a good game when it hurts. I hope everything will be okay tomorrow but sometimes it's very hard to play for him.
We don't know the result of Astralis vs. fnatic yet but I think many people assume fnatic although you never know. Which team do you prefer to play in the semis?
We want to play fnatic but I think that tonight Astralis are going to win and I picked them in my Pick'Em Challenge so I need them to win!
You want to play fnatic but which do you think would be a harder game for you guys?
I don't know, Astralis is a very good team too but fnatic is the best right now so I think fnatic will be harder for us, especially since we've never beaten them in a best-of-three on LAN for two years or something like that.
Would you say that the story of this year has been a battle for second place between you guys and Luminosity?
Yes in some sense but I think there's three teams really who compete for second: us, Luminosity, and Astralis. And now I think Luminosity will be in the final 100% and three teams that can fight for first place are on one side of the bracket so one of us will remain as the best decided team in that situation.
Are there any teams outside of those four that you think right now could break into the elite, assuming that top 5 is considered "elite?"
NiP has a good chance to break into the elite, with their full lineup, and I think Liquid have a good chance too because they brought in s1mple who is the sort of player that they needed but I think they should keep adreN if he will continue performing like this. So if they save this lineup from this Major they could become a top five team.
What did you think about the space between players on the stage of the Nationwide?
The space between players was good, I never look at my teammates' monitors for info because I have bad vision overall. But I do think booths are better because you can hear a lot of the crowd.
For example, there was a subwoofer close to us and if you shot into the sky with a TEC-9 or AWP the tables were shaking and it was hard to play. There was some white noise between us so when seized or I talked (we sat close to the subwoofer), there was a BZZZ noise in our TeamSpeak.

Two more matches will play out today at MLG Columbus, one that is currently ongoing between Astralis and fnatic and later on a match between CLG and Liquid.

stich writes for HLTV.org and can be found on Twitter