All the South East Asian teams are now eliminated from the Manila Major as MVP Phoenix lost the battle against LGD in the lower bracket.
The penultimate day in Manila witnessed the elimination of MVP Phoenix in the first series played at the Mall of Asia Arena. All three games had to be played in order to decide who would make it further into the tournament.
Game One
The first match was a display of brute force from LGD, who drafted strong right click heroes for their cores, all sustained by Lei 'MMY' Zengrong's legendary Lion and an Ancient Apparition for Xue 'September' Zhichuan. Coming out on top from the laning stage, LGD was superior in both farm and map control and not even a four man Chronosphere followed by a perfect ravage at the 10 minute mark could achieve a kill for MVP once the five man Dota started.
Although TA got her Desolator by the 20 minute mark, unfortunately it came online at the exact same time with Lycan’s BkB. That empowered LGD to roll on their momentum and push the Koreans constantly with the Aegis on their side to end the game in 30 minutes.
Game Two:
The series was pushed into a decisive game three by a signature MVP global AA - Spectre strategy. Overall good map rotations in the early laning stage put MVP in the lead with a 4-0 kill score while Spectre’s farm was ensured with constant harass on Zhang 'xiao8' Ning’s offlane Slardar. The Radiance was completed before 25 minutes and enabled MVP to keep hunting down LGD every time the two ultimates were off cooldown. Successfully contested Roshan kills by MVP made the high ground push possible during the mid stage of the game and forced LGD to use all their buybacks to defend the buildings but with no real success.
Game Three
Coming down to a bo1 decider for the top four finish, MVP was allowed to pick the notorious Kim 'QO' Seon-yeob - Slardar which was paired with Templar Assassin for a minus armor strategy, while LGD relied on heavy team fight control provided by Disruptor and Earth Spirit. The initiation duty was all on xiao8’s shoulders with a last Clockwerk pick that proved to be the winning component for the Chinese team at times.
Despite serving the first blood to MVP at the starting top rune, Sun 'Agressif' Zheng’s Juggernaut had an explosive start. Extremely early and constant rotations got him involved in five kills in only seven minutes which skyrocketed his item progression and put LGD in a tremendous lead. But agression turned into over-aggression and LGD gifted a triple kill to MVP’s Slardar who got his Blink Dagger out of it.
However, LGD didn’t allow the Koreans to keep the momentum and started to play more cautious, again claiming the Roshan advantage and making moves only with the Aegis secured on the Juggernaut. Even so, the fight for the bottom lane of barracks was extremely ferocious, MVP being able twice in a row to keep their buildings safe on the back of incredible team effort that took down four LGD heroes. Coming back for the high ground siege with an Aegis and Cheese, LGD secured mega creeps in one push and forced MVP to call out the GG.
The lower bracket semifinals matchup between Team Liquid and LGD is scheduled to commence today, June 11th, at 10:30 CEST.
title and hedline images source: PGL
