image source: Starladder
Second playoff day in Minsk, Belarus started with the first semifinals series between LGD Gaming and Evil Geniuses and will continue later on today with Alliance taking on Team Liquid for the last pot left in the grand finals.
Game One
Although LGD tried to trick Evil Geniuses with a Sven second pick that turned to be a roaming Lei "MMY" Zengrong instead of a normal carry hero for Liu "Sylar" Jun Liu , Peter "ppd" Dager was so not taking that bait and chose to go with a global map presence picking Nature’s Prophet and Spectre.
The game start was quite calm but things went crazy at the six minute mark when Batrider - Syed Sumail "Suma1L" Hassan decided it’s time for the first bold tower dive. In his Firefly adventure Suma1L found two solo kills plus one assist and with that his Blink Dagger was already secured.
A few minutes later EG showcased their team fight power for the first time in the game, defending as five their bottom lane tier one tower. Four LGD heroes hit the deck, mainly because of perfect positioning from Witch Doctor - Clinton "Fear" Loomis who got his first full channeled ultimate on.
The game continued with EG dominating the Chinese team with constant enemy jungle scouting incursions from ppd which found a lot of easy pick offs for the boys in blue. But apart from that, the MVP of the game was without a doubt Fear’s Witch Doctor who was spot on with his Paralyzing Cask spell and incredibly ultimate positioning. In fact, only 24 minutes into the game he already purchased his Aghanim’s Scepter and was on a dominating kill streak.
LGD’s painful experience ended around the 30 minute mark with a team wipe in their futile attempt to defend high ground.
Game Two
The second game of the series revived the legendary Sylar Morphling and ROTK messed with EG’s plans last picking Templar Assassin for Lu "Maybe" Yao.
The laning phase went in LGD’s favor, with a first blood six minutes into the hostilities and the fact that Sylar didn’t die a single time until late in the game came back to haunt the North Americans. Despite EG being the aggressive ones during mid game, LGD was still leading in terms of gold due to great split push from Sylar who was still roaming the map with no deaths to his name, an Ethereal Blade and Linken's Sphere at the 30 minute mark.
EG managed to take down the elusive morphling 10 minutes later but the game ended with a Rampage from Maybe’s TA.
Game Three
Learning from their losses, as Arteezy said in the winner's interview at the end of the series, EG banned Morph and Slark, another hero that can be a real threat in Sylar’s hands, and picked TA for themselves.
LGD rolled their dices with a Terrorblade and tried to counter Universe’s Void with Vengeful Spirit and Earth Shaker.
Unfortunately for LGD, Sylar got completely shut down in the laning stage, the first blood was drew on him by Suma1L’s Ember Spirit, which forced Sylar to rotate into the offlane. But the second he teleported in the lane he died again to Universe’s and Fear’s attacks. The death series continued for Sylar who was hunted by EG everywhere he tried to farm. Sylar lost his life four times in the first five minutes of the game which put LGD in the impossibility of joining any team fights with success.
EG’s tremendous lead made them a bit overconfident with their push and a missed Chronosphere from Universe 16 minutes into the game allowed LGD to secure four kills and suddenly Terrorblade was second in terms of net worth.
But that was the only time when EG would make a mistake and didn’t allow LGD to capitalize on their momentum. With beautiful coordination between Fear and Arteezy who trusted his old man Undying to be there with the strong heals when needed, EG wiped LGD in their own base when they made the first and last team effort to breach high ground.
Thirty minutes was all EG needed to claim the first spot into the Starladder|i-League grand finals where they will be joined by the winner of the next semifinals series; Alliance vs Team Liquid.
