There’s only one Chinese team left to fight for the Manila Major title after LGD Gaming were eliminated by Team Liquid in the lower bracket semifinals.
Much more like OG in Frankfurt, Team Liquid have to fight their way to the grand finals from lower bracket, where they got knocked down by MVP Phoenix in the first day of the playoffs.
Game One
With an undefeated record so far in the lower bracket, Team Liquid took game one of the series by utilizing the night vision advantage provided by Kuroky’s Night Stalker to maximum potential.
Although the game started on a relatively slow pace, with only five kills spread across the map by the 12 minute mark, TL started to build up their lead after they managed to turn around a gank attempt from LGD 14 minutes into the game. Always looking to fight with the infest bomb combo during night time, Liquid slowly but surely ground out their items, and created enough havoc on the map which put LGD in an odd position, given the fact that they were the ones supposed to dominate via pickoffs.
The game became even again when LGD interrupted a Roshan attempt and isolated the Lifestealer on the right cliff of the Pit with good usage of Batrider’s Flamebreak to secure a full five men wipe and the Aegis for themselves. Seven minutes later, LGD five man smoked in their own base and marched to the Radiant jungle but got spotted in time, right in front of the Roshan Pit and TL was the first to initiate straight on Rubick. The kill was followed by Night Stalker’s ultimate trigger and wiped out the rest of the Chinese team.
From there on Liquid rolled on their momentum, took down the mid lane of barracks at the 38 minute mark to close the game within the next five minutes.
Game Two
For the second game of the series Liquid had a mixed draft that emphasized both early skirmishes and pickoff potential,= with a Slark and a Bounty Hunter, but was also built for the late game, as LGD went with a last pick Terrorblade for Agressif.
The game started at an even slower pace than previous game, first blood came at the six minute mark and was scored by LGD who overall had a better laning stage and transitioned towards the mid game with a decent lead in both gold and experience.
Team Liquid recognized that they were behind and went with four of their heroes into the enemy jungle to find a pickoff. Having the Bounty Hunter in front to scout, they found the entire LGD grouped and landed the first perfect wombo-combo, Ravage into Static Storm, and killed four heroes, the only one escaping being the extra mobile Timbersaw. That was the turning point for Liquid who equalized the graphs.
The Tidehunter was able to rush and finish a Refresher Orb before 30 minutes while the Alchemist was grinding Aghanim’s Scepters for his supports, but LGD kept fighting and controlled the Roshan kills. With both teams trading kills in every team fight, the game went on for more than 60 minutes. Liquid nearly lost it at the 48 minute mark when they got baited with a Terrorblade illusion and wasted both Ravages on it to get wiped in the brawl that followed.
LGD were the first to claim mid and top lane of barracks, forcing Liquid to carefully plan all their pushes from there on. But as the time passed, TL had superior team fight with both supports being seven slotted, considering the Scepters gifted by Alchemist, and managed to knock LGD out from the tournament.
After eliminating LGD today, Liquid will have one more stop, in the lower bracket finals where they will face the other Chinese team left standing, namely Newbee. The two teams will meet for the second time in nearly one month, as Newbee and Team Liquid were the Epicenter grand finals protagonist, a best of five matchup that ended with a 3-2 final score in Liquid’s favor.
