The playoffs for DreamLeague season 5 have started today at the Monster Energy DreamHack Studios in Stockholm, Sweden with No Diggity, Virtus. Pro, Na’Vi and the defending champions OG battling in a studio LAN setup for the $100,000 prize pool.
All four teams were seeded in the upper bracket and the day opened with OG taking on No Diggity. The latter were under pressure the entire way, but refused to be sent into the lower bracket without putting up a great fight and forced the series into a decisive game three. After they lost the first game with an intricate draft that left little room for errors in team coordination, No Diggity defeated the Season 4 Champions in game two on the back of overconfidence from OG, who lost the game control with a tier two tower dive.
However, OG came back much more composed in the last game of the series and countered Troels 'syndereN' Nielsen’s split push strategy with a heavy pick-off oriented draft to secure the upper bracket finals spot.
The day continued with a CIS showdown between Virtus.Pro and Natus Vincere. This game also needed all three games to be played in order to decide who will join OG in the upper bracket finals, meaning more great action for the watching masses.
VP’s first series at DreamLeague Season 5 revealed new role swaps between the five players with Ilya 'ALOHADANCE' Korobkin in the carry role, Artsiom 'fng' Barshack returning to support and Maxim 'yoky-' Kim taking the offlane. And it seemed that the changes are beneficial as they displayed great team cohesion in all three games despite the 2-1 loss versus Natus Vincere. They took game one with a Death Prophet for Sergey 'G' Bragin and a Lifestealer for Aloha but lost the next two to a Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin signature Puck and a mean offlane Mirana played by Victor 'GeneRaL' Nigrini.
Day one at DreamLeague studio LAN playoffs continues with the upper bracket finals OG vs Na’VI and will finish with the first elimination match, were No Diggity and Virtus.Pro will face each other for their tournament lives.
title image source: DreamLeague's twitter account
