G-1 Day 2: Groupstage over, Alliance moves on to the final

It's the last game of the day and the group. The winner of this match joins Alliance, LGD and Orange in the bubble race playoffs. Liquid picks up heroes they are often seem playing, comfort heroes. Burning gets his Gyro which he played three out of four games already at this event. Liquid gets a good early start with TC getting massive farm as well as kills and towers. After a short trade mid, DK brings down Storm as well as Clock for the Visage, giving them some much needed gold and exp. Another fight goes down, restoring even more of DK’s shaky early due to a great Ship and Call Down after a questionable initiate by Bulba. From this moment, the clashes goes DK's way with their impressive clash potential. However, TC is still far ahead in terms of farm and networth. The game gets into a more static phase after that.

Liquid manages to get the Rosh kill + Aegis but loses the fight badly due to great play by Super! and QQQ. Liquid are still head in terms of gold gained but not by much, and the xp graph leaning more and more in DK's favour. After that the static phase continues all the way to the next Roshan where DK sets up for the kill. However, Korok jumps in with Storm, triggers BKB and steals both the Rosh kill aswell as the Aegis and then jumps out again unpunished. Great play by Korok. They use the Korok not to fight, but to farm and create space until the next Aegis. However, Ixmike walks in and dies followed by Korok  totally exploding without being able to use his BKB. DK gets the third Roshan and applies pressure. Liquid seems rather unaware of how to handle the situation and tries to defend but can't stop the massive AoE DPS coming out from Gyro and Kunkka. DK cuts through the Liquid heroes, takes down the top barracks and eventually forces the "gg". Liquid is eliminated, DK moves on.

The game starts out well for iG with them managing to pick off the Bear twice, first with a double damage and then by trapping it between creeps, heroes and trees. After that they quickly find two kills on the Lone Druid. The game is going rather even, Bulldog is nerfed but Loda is getting farm and Magnus making some big plays managing to kill of Queen of Pain solo, although dying to the poison afterwards. iG using the Wisp + Ck to find pick-offs but Alliance turns the tables on clash toplane with a clutch stun on two by Loda followed by s4 coming from nowhere with Skewer into Reverse.

When Alliance initiates on Prophet on the top lane, Invictus quickly rotates all their heroes there and manages to silence and kill off Magnus before he can ulti but Loda just right-clicks down the entire team. They take down the melee barracks top and then basically just walks over iG and takes the bottom barracks the next attempt. Alliance takes the game and goes undefeated in the group.

Much to the crowd's appreciation, Mushi trusted his good friend Shadow Fiend once again against the fearsome LGD. The choice was wise, as he was able to farm a lot faster than LGD's Antimage, reaching the 100 cs barrier before minute 15, only behind the Dark Seer. LGD's supports were able to score many early game kills, mostly thanks to the assistance of xiao8's Clockwerk. However, Sylar dropped twice to Orange's ganks, delaying his Battle Fury significantly. The score was 11-9 in favor of the Chinese when the game hit the 20th minute mark.

Orange managed to kill Antimage for the third time with 22 minutes on the clock, but xiao8's quick rotation costed the Malaysians Shadow Fiend and Bane, forcing Mushi to spend another  unfruitful Black King Bar charge. LGD found the supports again a few seconds later, adding two more kills to the scoreboard.

Just over half an hour into the game, the situation got fired up with both teams competing for a Roshan kill. With Sylar's net worth reaching dangerous levels, LGD were able to trap Mushi inside the Cogs, with xiao8's Clock and Sylar's Antimage, taking him down along with most Orange's damage potential. The fight ended 4-2 in favor of the Chinese, and they got a free Roshan as well.

The things went downhill for the Malaysians from then. LGD was able to win another teamfight right outside Orange's base, taking down the bottom barracks as well. Sylar snowball farm had turned him into an unstoppable killing machine. One more 4-0 fight for Orange caused by Mushi's bad positioning sealed the deal for LGD, taking the middle barracks and forcing out the GG.

Liquid goes against iG for the sixth game of Day 2, and one can witness the Chinese superstars continue their questionable performance in G-1 LAN finals. Liquid goes for the strong Wisp - Chaos Knight combination, strengthened by the presence of the infamous Slark, Dark Seer and Keeper of the Light - a squad that is notorious for its early game power. IG, on the other hand, use Lone Druid and Alchemist for their solos, and a Nyx-Visage-Jakiro combination for their trilane. The selection of two item-dependent carries really affects iG's early game, as Liquid abuse their heroes to completely dominate every lane.

The first blood is drawn against YYF's Visage, with Chuan and Faith unable to react. Liquid keeps finding kills on the trilane, giving a strong experience boost to ixmike88 and Fluff. Bulba has the easiest time top against Zhou, enabling him to join the bottom clashes earlier than he was supposed to. He even manages to win his team the first big fight, using a level one Wall of Replica to crush iG 11 minutes into the game.

iG seems unable to keep up with Liquid's pressure, and kept being ganked all around the map, allowing Liquid to get an easy Roshan by minute 20. Korok takes the situation one step further, using Ethereal Blade on Slark to get even more kills on the defenseless Dire. The game concludes with the one-sided score of 31-3, further surprising the fans of the Chinese superstars.

DK opts for the high impact trilane of Leshrac, Visage and Earthshaker and sends it down to the botlane versus Mushi's solo Weaver, whom they manage to kill a few times. The supports from Orange responds by picking up a kill on Burning aswell as on Super, thus ensuring that the top and midlane are won by Orange while leaving the offensive tri of DK as a lost cause, since the hero is basically lacking a snowball hero anyway. DK capitalizes on mistakes made by Mushi to get back into the game, Weaver keeps being a non-force. Although a few mistakes and overextensions the other way around actually grants Weaver a few good fights and Orange regains some momentum. However, Orange keeps making crucial mistakes, and Ky.xy gets picked off way too often, some if it due to missjudged initations by him. DK takes control of the fights in what is seemingly and even game and with a massively farmed Burning, they manages to breach the base, take down the heroes of Orange and proceed to destroy the buildings. DK takes the game.

It’s time for the big game, LGD vs Alliance. Both teams having a score of 3-0 currently, and have been showing impressive performances in all their games. LGD falls back on what appears to be the same strategy as they have been running all their games so far, focused around Kunkka and aggression. Although this game they decided to run safe lane tri and trade farm with the Phantom Lancer of Alliance. The game started out well for LGD, giving Bulldog a hard time bot aswell as taking down towers in a very crazy pace. Using smoke ganks and Kunkka’s X, they also find kills around the map, while Alliance fails their gank attempts due to Coco’s Rum and the general tankiness of Kunkka. LGD is in a good position and goes for applying pressure to the base using the farmed bear. However, during this, Lancer gets farmed and only teleports back in the last second while KotL + Clock stalls the push. Once the clash starts, s4 with his famous Magnus moves together with EGM's well stolen skills (such as Ghost Ship) helps defending the base and winning the clashes. LGD tries the same thing multiple times, not getting any farm to talk about while Loda just gets bigger and bigger. The rest of Alliance also gains advantage because of their successful defending and won clashes. Loda buys Boots of Travel and applies pressure everywhere, LGD are forced to teleport back atleast three heroes every time he approaches the base. LGD fail to keep it up forever, Alliance breach their base with hooks and skewers, takes down the barracks and the game is eventually won by Alliance. By winning the game, Alliance also won the group and are guaranteeed to play the final.

Invictus Gaming goes up against DK eSports, both teams having 0-2 since yesterday and both teams really need to win. IG seemed a bit lost in their first games both in terms of picks as well as play, very uncharacteristic of them. Ferrari plays Alchemist mid this game and goes for early rotations and ganks, more of a utility build. YYF plays really well during the start of this game, stacking an enemy creep camp and killing it off before hitting his own jungle to reach level 6 at minute 6 and pick up his dagger at minute 9. The trilane from DK bot gets disrupted by iG and DK feels severely crippled. The signature moves and rotations from iG seems to be back and track to some extent, they force the tempo of the game and seals the deal on all the clashes with great usage of both Alchemist aswell as Luna’s ultimate. iG takes the win.

LGD went for their Kunkka-focused line-up and for the offensive trilane once again. The game started out very well by some incredible juking and control by Sylar in the botlane when Fluff and Bulba teamed up to gank him. With Shadow Demon teleporting in, LGD gets the first blood. A similar situation happens a bit later but this time Liquid adds Korok in the mix. This doesn’t stop Sylar from controlling all of them like a pro, resulting in more kills going their way and none for Liquid. The trilane from LGD also finds kills top lane, being very aggressive. LGD getting a substantial lead and getting really tanky, especially with the buff from the Ghost Ship. Liquid tries out a few engagements but LGD heroes just won’t drop. LGD pushes out and the game is cut short.

For the first game of the day, Alliance started the day with an impressive excibition of their teamwork. The show started with a kill on the Dire courier by AdmiralBulldog's Nature's Prophet, who also scored the first blood with the help of Akke.

The choice of Phantom Assassin and Windrunner proved wise against the offensive trilane of the Malaysians, as the two elusive heroes avoided most of the kill attempts against them. The trilane of Shadow Demon, Gyrocopter and Sand King, that could otherwise destroy the enemy carry, could not play the game they wanted.

With the global presence of AdmiralBulldog and s4's teamfight control, Orange seemed to be in huge disadvantage in every teamfight. They chose to stop trying to get kills until they build a stable inventory and get back on their feet from the early game fiasco, forgetting that they were facing a hero Loda has mastered - Phantom Assassin. They even attempted to kill a 29 minute Roshan, spending two buybacks to prevent Alliance from stealing the kill. The Aegis on Mushi did not improve the situation, as Loda took Mushi down shortly after. Aided by the carries' excessive farm, Alliance's damage was getting too high for Orange to handle.

After a predictable Smoke gank against Alliance, the Malaysians realised their last hope had faded - Loda and the boys marched inside the Dire base, taking two sets of barracks and wiping Orange once again. The bottom barracks felt shortly after, with Loda showcasing the potential of his shiny inventory. Alliance takes the first game of Day 2.

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