The Dota 2 International 6’s Group Stage started off today, with Round 1 featuring Group A. Each team will play a series of two games against every other team in the group, and based on those results the Main Event’s bracket will be filled.
The first series, between the wings gaming and Evil Geniuses, had the TI5 defending champions looking weak and running scared from wings in the first game. EG ran a Huskar-Slardar dual-core lineup, with Batrider in the off-lane, and wings had their number at every turn with a Viper for the Huskar and an Oracle for the Batrider. They brought EG down at 34 minutes with a final score of 29-19. The second game featured some classic 322 and counter feeds, with wings using a peculiar fourth position Pudge and off-lane Magnus to secure Shadow’s rampage on Slark in the early game, but they almost immediately threw it back to EG’s Huskar, where Sumail redeemed himself by leading the uphill charge to close out the second game and end the series 1-1 at 47 minutes and a final score or 24-22.
The second series featured Alliance versus TNC Pro Team, where the swedes’ out-pushed TNC on the back of Loda’s Drow Ranger and Admiral Bulldog’s Broodmother, ending the game at 35 minutes with a dominant 30-6 score. S4 put in an outstanding game on Storm Spirit, going 17-0-12 with a 748 GPM. Alliance maintained their clear advantage in the second game, holding TNC to just 7 kills while racking up 39 of their own over the 40-minute game. Bulldog took his split pushing Lone Druid to new heights, participating in less than half of his team’s kills while putting up 716 GPM. S4’s mid-lane Batrider was in top form, as he goes a second game leading in kills at 14-1-15, securing the 2-0 series win for Alliance.
Third, fan favorites Natus Vincere (or NaVi) faced off against Escape Gaming, who got Era’s Ursa farmed enough to storm the high ground of NaVi’s dual core Lifestealer-Ember Spirit, who never really got off the ground. Escape closed out NaVi at 36 minutes with a 30-18 score. In the second game, NaVi answered back with a very aggressive pushing lineup featuring Drow Ranger, Mirana, and Nature’s Prophet, who took the win at only 18 minutes with a scoreline of 18-6. Era struggled to carry his team through the fights as Slark, but Ditya Ra had no problems on Mirana, going 6-0-9 to end the series 1-1.
The final series of the first set had OG Dota 2 playing LGD-GAMING, the two strongest teams of the group getting each other out of the way early. Over 51 minutes of play, OG took the score lead 28-17, but Dota is an objective-based game and LGD’s objective-based playstyle led them to victory. OG flipped the script in game two, where Miracle-‘s Juggernaut went 22-3-10 and cleaned up team fight after team fight. xiao8’s amazing Batrider and Maybe’s exemplary Timbersaw weren’t enough to win as LGD’s pushing draft centered around Agressif on Lycan, and after about the 30-minute mark OG’s team fight and control were enough to keep LGD from going 2-0, instead pushing the draw 1-1 at 58 minutes.
This article was written by a past writer, Daniel Giroday.
