The first challenge between the Chinese superpowers started with a deathball reborn in the hands of Vici Gaming. VG decided to put Super in his signature Pugna and protected him with Fenrir’s ES. EHOME in the other hand banked in a more classic draft with Cty’s Lina and rOtk on DarkSeer, however both of them had a terrible time in their solo lanes due a better lanning and ganks by VG.
Every time fy got a glimpse his team secured a kill and translated it into a tower push. At this point EHOME knew they couldn’t take a fight into their opponet's nether ward+fissure, so they opted to sacrifice their towers but avoid giving any more kills in order to get a decent timing in their BKBs. Fenrir’s squad acknowledged this weakness and went even more aggressive in their pushes, forcing all the tier2 towers minutes after.
The first lane of racks fell as the timer reached the half-hour. VG brute-forced highground and managed to surprise rOtk with an excellent fissure and the proper follow-up. The Chinese captain didn’t have buyback so the rest of EHOME could do nothing but watch their entire top-lane fall prey of VG.
Vici didn’t lift the foot from the pedal at all and tried to take another lane of racks but this time EHOME managed to get an excellent focus fire on on Hao’s Gyrocopter in the back of ddc’s Rubick blink+telekinesis initiations. Now both teams felt that they were strong enough to engage in teamfights but EHOME seemed to get slightly better outcomes due to the annihilating focus on Hao. ROtk’s squad started to gain more ground since their BKB’s were enabled their cores to play around the fights as they saw fit.
But VG realized that the BKB charges were getting lower and lower and this was iceiceice’s time to shine. The successful pushes and his high KDA enabled the Singaporean superstar to finish a quick bloodstone, and after one good fight in the middle lane he got a refresher orb. This last item single-handedly decimated EHOME in the following engagement at VG’s jungle. Fenrir & Co seized this opportunity to get an Aegis on Hao, cheese on Super and then pushed the middle lane.
The TI4 runner-up got the tower freely and decided to re-group for a second to heal themselves. YJ interpreted they were actually giving-up on the push and got a bit ahead of his team for farm some waves. VG’s initiating ability once again surprised EHOME’s cores and managed to get Luna in 20% HP and forcing a Song. EHOME didn’t have time enough to heal their carry but Vici’s push almost crumbled anyways after an amazing vacuum+wall combo. At this point every single hero in VG’s lineup was too farmed and overcame the damage dealt by their rivals, finally breaking EHOME and forcing a GG.
The second game of the series showed a distinctly different approach by VG since the leading squad opted to slow down the pace and picked an AM for Hao. Instead of changing their draft compared to the first game, EHOME decided to go ‘double or nothing’ featuring one of the sickest teamfight combinations seen yet in the main event.
The game slowly developed as both teams traded farm but fy once again surprised EHOME with his glimpses: LaNm and YJ went hard on iceiceice to in order zone him out of the lane but a TP and a glimpse secured a firstblood on the former DK veteran. The teams tried to punish each others aggression by committing several tps including their hardcarries (emulating the highly successful CDEC carry player Agressiff) but VG was getting better trades all around: Hao was getting too farmed too soon.
EHOME did manage to punish some of VG’s (over)aggression with a few kills, which forced Vici to start respecting their opposition’s superior teamfight power. The tempo slowed enough for Cty’s Storm to farm-up his bloodstone but YJ couldn't farm efficiently and fell way too far behind, barely having a drums at the 20th minute mark. EHOME decided to push the tempo with their great ultimates and went for a smoke into Dire’s ancients, catching and killing Hao. The problem was that EHOME was already out of gas and too far inside enemy lines, something that Vici swiftly took advantage off and displayed their personal arsenal of ultimates: sealing a four-man takedown with a beautiful kinetic field+sonicwave+storm.
Things only seemed to get better for Fenrir’s boys as they took an opportunity to rosh and search for a teamfight. It looked very grim for EHOME’s fans as VG invaded their jungle looking to establish further dominance but this was one of the turning points of the game. A very scrappy but absolutely amazing fight from EHOME featured a game-saving stolen snowball by LaNm combined with a late but highly efficient ultimates by rOtk’s Sandking and ddc’s Silencer. The timing was so impeccable by EHOME that an underfarmed Cty managed to secure a 5-man-wipe.
The next 20 minutes involved several fights that displayed an amazing solo performance by Cty but the rest of his team showed signs of restraints under the VG’s unrelenting pressure. ROtk had to search for the perfect moment in order to land a decent epicenter whilst both Rubick and Silencer had to stay behind. This left YJ’s Gyro exposed in the front to an unforgiving QoP by Super. At this point the fights became more and more sided for VG as EHOME didn’t look to have enough damage for both QoP and AM, specially when they counted on Fenrir’s remarkable cold embraces.
In the end it was fight after fight in favour of VG up until they were hunting for heroes besides EHOME’s ancient. The timer reached the 45th minute mark as Cty GG’d and further enhanced the unstoppable 7-0 streak by VG in this lower bracket.
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