Day 1 of the Main Event of Dota 2’s The International 6 is here! Over $20,000,000 raised for the prize pool, and it’ll keep growing right up to the end of the Grand Finals, but to get there we need to start here in the Winner’s Bracket Quarter Finals. The first two were just finished up, as MVP Phoenix beat OG 2-1 and the wings gaming lost to Digital Chaos in three as well.
MVP Phoenix took their first game with QO and Febby on staple picks Phantom Assassin and Bounty Hunter. Between them and DuBu’s Spirit Breaker isolating Miracle-‘s Timbersaw, after thirty nine minutes OG called “GG” and left the score at 41-30. Miracle- played excellently, but all the skill in the world couldn’t make up for everyone else on the team getting eaten alive by QO’s huge crits and FoREv’s top-notch Dark Seer Vacuum-Wall of Replica combos. Fly and Cr1t on Shadow Demon and Earth Spirit were often locked out of helping N0tail’s Sven and Miracle- by DuBu, who’s disruptive Charge of Darkness and Nether Strike kept them retreating or dying in the majority of engagements. A good win for MVP, and going up early in these series is always a recipe for success.
Game two saw QO on Alchemist and MP on Venomancer, but Miracle- and N0tail on Outworld Devourer and Terrorblade proved enough to stop the snowballing QO who turned out to take just a little too much farm off the map, and his malnourished teammates could only look on and watch as the two core lineup from OG took the game in 43 minutes and 37-11. Fly provided a great showing of Oracle, healing almost 49,000 health to his teammates and himself, and Moon and Cr1t on Batrider and Naga Siren combined for fifty assists. DuBu’s Vengeful Spirit and Febby’s Mirana struggled to contribute in team fights and even stay alive outside of them. OG did a great job of evening up the series here and forcing the game three.
OG couldn’t keep their momentum up, though, and Miracle-‘s Tinker couldn’t keep the early aggression of FoREv’s Axe, QO’s Phantom Assassin, and MP’s Quas Wex Invoker outside of OG’s base. FoREv in particular turned in a masterclass on Axe, going 17-0-9 and hitting Blink-Calls everywhere he went, even outpacing Miracle-s’ 412 Gold Per Minute with his own 624 GPM. QO never died either for MVP, but OG just couldn’t stay alive, with eleven deaths on Cr1t’s normally resilient Elder Titan, eight deaths on Miracle-, and ten deaths for N0tail on Sven. Moon couldn’t quite break 200 GPM as Faceless Void, either, which kept him below both DuBu’s Shadow Demon and Febby’s Ogre Magi on the net worth chart. The game ended 36-4 at 30 minutes, and for the last five of them only MP’s Invoker died on MVP, while eleven deaths were racked up by OG, including Cr1t four times and Miracle- thrice. MVP takes the series 2-1 and advance to the Winner’s Bracket Semi-Finals, while OG drop to the Loser’s Bracket 9th/12th Round to face the winner of TNC Pro Team and Vici_Gaming Reborn.
The second series of the WBQF started off with wings taking control after thirty three minutes after back and forth swings powered by W33’s Alchemist and Resolut1on’s Nature’s Prophet splitting up the map and farming away while shadow and Blink worked on itemizing their Drow Ranger and Mirana combo. Faith_bian provided some much needed control as Brewmaster, and ultimately proved to be the fulcrum point that his team could fight around and dismantle the otherwise weak DC lineup, in particular making Saksa’s life difficult on Oracle. 25-17 read the scoreboard after 43 minutes, with wings up 1-0 in the series.
Perhaps feeling overly confident, or maybe unwilling to respect a DC squad that often gets looked down on for playing out of the Americas’ region, wings pulled out a pocket strat by picking Pudge fourth and Techies fifth, even though DC had first picked a Shadow Demon who can clear out Techies traps at will with his illusions. It turned out to be their downfall, as iceice said in a post series interview: “We wanted to blow them up but we blew ourselves up instead.” Resolut1on and w33 played excellent games on Luna and Invoker, and Moo busted out his Timbersaw to great effect, keeping the net worth advantage growing in their favour all game long, even after shadow’s Naga Siren grabbed a Radiance after twenty three minutes. Faith_bian even struggled to hold the high ground as Techies, thanks to Saksa’s illusions and DC’s Gem of True Sight. 20-9 and 27 minutes later, the series was all tied up.
Game three went in the exact opposite direction, however, as Resolut1on was hardly relevant on his Morphling and w33’s second go on Invoker turned out to be something wings were prepared for, with iceice’s Chen out-pushing the DC side and Innocence on Rubick making MISERY’s Riki and Moo’s Batrider look like the second best versions of themselves. Blink on Timbersaw and shadow on Slark rounded out wings’ dominant line up, who ended the game very quickly at 25 minutes and a final score of 27-9. With the 2-1 victory, the wings gaming moves on to the next round of the Winner’s Bracket to face MVP Phoenix, and Digital Chaos are dropped to Loser’s Bracket 9th/12th to play either Team Secret or LGD-GAMING.
