Imperial fe lose to NAVI, but show potential for the future

Imperial Valkyries, also known simply as Imperial fe, have shocked the CS2 world on Jan. 16 as they put up a good fight against NAVI, one of the best teams in the world.

The all-women team comprised of Ana "ANa" Dumbravă, Alexandra "twenty3" Timonina, Viktoria "tory" Kazieva, Katarína "Kat" Vašková, and Zainab "zAAz" Turkie lost 2-0 to NAVI at the BLAST Bounty Season 1 event, but they put up a good show despite being inexperienced at this level of play.

Imperial fe, like most all-women teams in CS2, play mostly in female events. They have been dominating the ESL Impact scene for years, and today made the most out of the opportunity to compete at BLAST, the first tier-one tournament of the year.

This was only made possible because Valve valued women's tournaments highly, putting Imperial fe among the best 25 teams in the world in their official ranking. As a result of that, BLAST had to invite Imperial fe for the Bounty tournament.

Many CS2 fans thought Imperial fe would get trounced at the hands of NAVI due to playing in inferior tournaments and even bashed Valve for allowing the invite in the first place.

However, we saw Imperial fe making the most out of this opportunity. They showed the world that they could be a decent team at the highest level.

The match kicked off on Ancient, and the first rounds set the tone of the series: NAVI would not win easily. Aleksi "Aleksib" Virolainen and his troops had to win two clutches right at the beginning of Ancient.

Losing the clutches didn't hurt Imperial fe's confidence, on the contrary. They won five rounds in a row on the T-side and moved past NAVI on the scoreboard.

Imperial fe had a real chance to win on Ancient as they kept playing well as CTs, however, an eco loss put their economy in jeopardy and NAVI never looked back.

Those who thought that Imperial fe were just luck on Ancient because it's their best map were wrong as they put up a good fight on Mirage as well. NAVI were the more consistent team, though, and ran away with the victory off the back of another eco round in the second half.

However, the best highlights of Mirage were all delivered by Kat. She even connected two one-Deags onto Valerij "b1t" Vakhovsjkyj and Ihor "w0nderful" Zhdanov, two top 20 players in the world in 2024.

Even though Imperial fe lost the series today, nobody can deny their potential. As a matter of fact, Imperial fe played better against NAVI than Imperial's male lineup. The men lost by 13-2 at IEM Rio in October 2024.

That's all for now. Stay tuned to esports.gg for more CS2 news.