Today is the last day of Nanyang Season 2. Three Chinese teams were left to race each other for the title. While Wings Gaming were the first to secure the grand finals spot, the two TI6 directly invited teams from the region, Newbee and LGD had to fight in the lower bracket finals for a shot at the title.
Game One:
The first game between the two Chinese giants started at a low pace, both teams prioritizing farm over early ganks. At the eleven minute mark only two kills were drawn, both by Newbee. Despite having a very mobile draft, and a global presence ensured by Ancient Apparition, LGD Gaming didn’t force any skirmishes, and it was in fact the greedy Newbee lineup who made the first aggressive move by grouping as five mid lane to take the first tower objective. The burst damage provided by Drow Ranger aura and good coordination with the support Kunka took down three of the Newbee heroes but still LGD lost the tier one tower.
The next big push happened nearly ten minutes later when Newbee secured the Aegis for themselves and went straight for the first tier three tower, acknowledging the lack of control from their adversaries who were still waiting for Storm Spirit to finish his Orchid. Despite taking the bottom tier three tower without casualties, Newbee retreated and from there on they let Beastmaster split push while Terrorblade and Dragon Knight were continuously farming their late game items.
With the next Roshan spawn Newbee tricked LGD and allowed them to have an uncontested Aegis while Damien 'kpii' Chok was solo pushing the bottom lane. With the Aegis placed on Storm Spirit, LGD went for a base push top lane but despite having the numbers advantage and the Aegis, they weren’t’ able to breach high ground against a four man defense from Newbee. Four because Beastmaster continued his solo split push and while LGD was fighting top he took the bottom lane of barracks and with that finished his Refresher Orb.
The new item on BM proved to be extremely troublesome for LGD who was lacking a Manta Style on their Drow and had no real answer to Newbee’s many initiation options. A perfectly placed Winter Curse in the middle of the five men grouped LGD marching uphill mid lane, took down four heroes at the 38 minute mark which allowed Newbee to counter push to take the last tier three standing for LGD. But they didn’t finish the job until they secured the third Roshan of the game.
LGD was forced to tap out a few minutes later when Newbee returned to clear all the buildings with the Aegis placed on Terrorbalde and the Cheese on Dragon Knight.
Game Two:
The second game start was totally different from game one. LGD secured a draft well suited for early ganks and forced Newbee to rotate in order to protect their Drow Ranger in the safe lane. Although the kill score was in LGD’s advantage only five minutes into the game, Newbee finished a seven minutes Mekansm on their Viper and started to put in use the Io - Relocate ganks.
LGD’s explosive start and lead was rapidly shut down after Newbee took down the first and only Roshan kill of the game, 17 minutes into the game. With the Aegis placed on Drow Ranger whose only core item was a Dragon Lance, Newbee went for a slow high ground push mid lane. The Overcharged Drow plus the good sustain from Viper’s Mekansm was all Newbee needed to keep hitting the tier three mid tower for over three minutes until they finally managed to take it down only losing the Aegis. Riding on their momentum, Newbee kept pressuring LGD in their own base and good initiations from kpii’s Axe found the kills needed to take two sets of barracks in one push. Newbee never stopped the siege, ignored top lane completely and instead went straight for tier four towers and the Throne itself to take a 2-0 victory in under 25 minutes.
Nanyang Season 2 best of five Grand Finals - Wings Gaming vs Newbee are set to kick off in about 30 minutes, at 14:00 SGT / 09:00 CEST.
