As the end of the group stages draws near, teams are eagerly fighting for those final few points that will become the deciding factor if they begin the Main Event from the Lower Bracket or the Upper Bracket. With Group B having the potential for a 4-way tie, every match matters.
Vici Gaming vs Newbee
Vici Gaming faced off against Newbee with only one desire in mind: A 2-0 win. Securing both games, Vici Gaming would be able to have an easier chance of going into the Main Event from the upper bracket. Otherwise, many other conditions were going to have to be met eventually leading to a 4-way tie breaker.
However, in game one Vici Gaming seemed to struggle to gather enough momentum to overcome the aggression of Newbee. A surprise Silencer pick was able to create enough disruption in the fights for Newbee to hinder the early ganks from IceIceice’s Sand King and Fy’s Lina. Without this momentum, Fy and the rest of Vici struggled to keep up with the incoming gold from the Bounty Hunter’s numerous tracks.
With this impressive gold and experience advantage, Mu’s Queen of Pain and Rabbit’s Dragon Knight with a Blink Dagger were able to snowball and overwhelm Vici Gaming in team fights. Vici was unable to recover after a series of disadvantageous fights around the Roshan Pit. Finally, Vici was forced to GG after Newbee assaulted their high ground and simply continued to dive and kill them even past their own tier 4 towers.
Attempting to recover from their loss, Vici Gaming entered game 2 and drafted a ver aggressive early game lineup. Drafting heroes such as Spirit Breaker for Fenrir and Tusk for IceIceIce, Vici Gaming developed a very strong early to mid-game lineup specializing in ganks and early fights. Newbee responded by picking a lineup more focused on mid to late game lineup with strong team fighting abilities by picking heroes such as Ember Spirit for Mu, Dark Seer for June, and once again Dragon Knight for Rabbit.
Vici Gaming’s investment in the early game began to pay off as Fy’s Rubik secured first blood with the help of Hao’s Queen of Pain. Continuing in this manner, Vici continued to be aggressive across all lanes putting a strong emphasis and shutting down Mu on his Ember Spirit. Vici was successfully able to turn this early aggression and advantage into early tower kills and map control. Newbee attempted several times to combat this momentum with several early smoke ganks themselves but found themselves unable to win these early skirmishes.
By the 25-minute mark, Vici Gaming had created a 16k gold lead and began setting their sights on the Newbee's high ground. When the push finally came from Vici Gaming, none of the heroes on Newbee were able to fight against the aggression from Vici Gaming leading to game ending at 30 minutes after their first lane of racks were claimed and several members of Newbee were unable to even leave their fountain.
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