Day three of the biggest tournament in Dota 2 and esports history is here! The first round of the day had Alliance play Natus Vincere, Evil Geniuses fight Escape Gaming, TNC Pro Team matches up against LGD-GAMING, and the wings gaming play OG Dota2.
The first game of El Clasico, the Alliance-NaVi brawl, was a pitched back-and-forth fight that went downhill for Dendi and his boys after a twenty minute build up resulted in Ditya Ra’s Juggernaut being killed, after which he couldn’t keep up with Lod[A]’s Lifestealer who ran away with the game, going 6-0-4 on his way to forcing out the “GG” by 27 minutes. The rematch went entirely in Alliance’s favor, with S4’s signature Puck leaving Dendi on Brewmaster behind. EGM had an outstanding game on Witch Doctor, going 7-3-24 and healing over 12,700 health to his allies. 34 minutes was when NaVi said “Uncle”, leaving the series 2-0 in favor of Alliance.
Evil Geniuses took the second series in style over Escape Gaming, both games being relative landslides for the boys in blue. Although they played well, with Sumail’s Razor and Mirana and Universe’s Faceless Void and Batrider deserving special mention, it was a case of Escape not producing results. Era couldn’t quite get going on Huskar in the first game, and never made the impact he needed to on Tiny in the second. Ultimately, EG was the better team, and Escape had to concede after 24 and 36 minutes with scores of 24-7 and 21-9. Escape is having a tough time, with only one game won so far.
Third, TNC Pro Team pulled off what may be the upset of the tournament when they took both games off of LGD-GAMING. The first marathon of a match looked to be going as expected, with Agressif’s Morphling and Maybe on Juggernaut keeping Kuku’s Alchemist down and preventing Raven on Terrorblade from getting up to much, but a skirmish just before fifty-five minutes resulted in Morphling and Beastmaster combining to give 2000 gold to TNC from their deaths, and three short minutes later a team fight that ended with four dead on Dire and only three for LGD still resulted in a net worth spike for Kuku who was able to mop up Juggernaut and Morphling. Alchemist quickly farmed out three Aghanim Scepters to Terrorblade, Slardar, and Kunkka, only the last of which receives an upgrade, and LGD conceded at 68 minutes after having two lanes and their tier fours pushed down. The second match went all TNC’s way, only giving up four kills while taking twenty-four off of LGD. xiao8 and Banana on Slardar and Ogre Magi were powerless in the face of Kuku’s 5-0-11 Juggernaut and Raven’s 9-0-8 Mirana. LGD ended up calling “GG” at 29 minutes, after two botched team fights and a handful of pickoffs left them too crippled to defend. TNC surprisingly took this series 2-0.
The fourth pair took the longest, with OG and wings combining for over 125 minutes of Dota action. The first game was a kill heavy slugfest, with a slight edge in OG’s favor thanks to Miracle- on Anti-Mage putting up 711 Gold Per Minute, outmatched only by Blink’s Invoker at 727. However, a bungled team fight at forty-five minutes was all it took for wings to swing the game firmly in their favor and cement it that way with a quick series of pickoffs and skirmishes while pushing down mid- and bottom lane. OG called the “GG” at 68 minutes with a score of 52-34. The second match looked to be all wings, all the way, with Blink on Tinker and shadow on Sven controlling Miracle-‘s Huskar and the rest of OG with no issues. Immediately after wings’ peak net worth advantage of 19,000 gold at forty-seven minutes, Sven and Tinker both died twice in the span of six minutes to give over 6,000 gold to OG, which Miracle- used to pick up a much needed Black King Bar and Abyssal Blade. Sven was unable to handle the control coming from Moon on Faceless Void and N0tail on Venomancer, both of whom had picked up a timely Scythe of Vyse to keep Sven hexed and dead. wings snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and conceded at 57 minutes, final score 30-26 in their favor. The series would go 1-1.
After this round, the standings for Group A have Evil Geniuses out in front with 6-2, Alliance, TNC, and OG tied for second at 5-3, the wings gaming and LGD-GAMING tied for fifth at 4-4, NaVi sitting in seventh with 2-6, and Escape Gaming sitting in the basement having won only one game and lost the rest for a 1-7 record.
This article was written by a past writer, Daniel Giroday.
