The Summit 5 finals day has started with the lower bracket matchup between OG and Team Liquid, the last lower bracket series that decided third place finishers and the second Grand Finalist squad.
OG and Team Liquid faced each other a lot lately, both teams being the usual suspects for the LAN grand finals. However, this time around the new Chinese sensation, Wings Gaming, defeated them both in the upper bracket to be the first to advance in the Grand Finals.
Game One
For the first game of the series, OG were the ones to have the first pick and didn’t hesitate a second to open the draft with Drow Ranger which was comboed later on with one of the strongest heros possible in this situation, namely the Outworld Devourer for Amer 'Miracle-' Al-Barkawi. Interestingly enough, Liquid decided to put their faith into a last pick carry Luna and tried to delay OG‘s snowballing momentum with an aggressive trilane.
As expected, the squishy Luna had her moment of glory only at the beginning of the laning stage when Liquid managed to secure a triple kill for her with a rotation from Tidehunter. Two minutes later OG grouped as five in the bottom lane and it was their turn to crush Liquid who brought the entire squad, except the Invoker to defend the tier one tower. OD secured a triple kill and started to snowball extremely fast, having of course his orb attacks boosted by the Drow Aura which made a Roshan kill go extremely fast in Liquid’s favor at the 11 minute mark.
With the Aegis on Drow and a Hurricane Pike finished on OD, OG pushed high ground only 13 minutes into the game, took the full set of barracks in the bottom lane without any casualties and proceeded to siege the mid lane. The game ended in just 18 minutes with Miracle casually hunting for kills in the Liquid base while his teammates secured mega creeps.
Game Two
Facing potential elimination, Liquid took Drow Ranger out of the picture with their first ban and built an intricate line up that ended with a confusing Zeus last pick that instead of being played by Adrian 'FATA-' Trinks, went in the long trail of unconventional supports Kuro 'KuroKy' Salehi Takhasomi played in the last two days. From Pudge to Clockwerk and Zeus Support, Kuro clearly showed within The Summit 5 run that Liquid is developing their “standard” game play and are preparing for “outside the box” drafts. In doing so, they managed to outmaneuver the scary Naga Siren-Juggernaut duo cores of OG.
Despite losing the offlane to the heavy push KotL-Naga combo, Liquid won the other two lanes with a fearless Mirana played by Fata and with the steady farming Anti Mage of Lasse 'MATUMBAMAN' Urpalainen who, same as Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein, didn’t participate in any of the many early skirmishes. His first commitment for five man Dota came 20 minutes into the game when Liquid smoked as five in the mid lane, ran into a grouped OG who broke the smoke and tried to counter attack with a Naga Song. However, Fata had the quicker fingers and popped the Moonlight Shadow which saved his team from death and, even more, secured three kills on OG who tried to take the fight despite lacking detection.
As soon as they respawned, OG went straight into the Roshan Pit without being noticed and secured an uncontested Aegis for Juggernaut which balanced the game. Nevertheless, Liquid kept the aggressiveness on and found numerous pickoffs. The winning moment came at the 32 minute mark when they found Juggernaut farming isolated near his bottom lane tier two tower. Unfortunately for OG, Miracle was killed without a buyback available and that meant the game for them as Liquid took two lanes of barracks in one push and forced OG to a decisive game three.
Game Three
The last game of the series started with bans on the two winning factors in the previous matches, namely Drow Ranger and Mirana. Comfort picks for both teams such as Beastmaster, Invoker, Io or even Juggernaut also didn’t made it into the pick pool and the Huskar - Matumbaman came into play. OG immediately responded with an Ancient Apparition and despite the healing deny from AA, Liquid followed with a Dazzle pick. OG continued to draft reactively and made the choice of sending Miracle mid lane on Axe.
The laning stage went extremely well for OG as David 'MoonMeander' Tan punished Huskar’s aggressive plays by solo killing him twice and even rotated mid lane to help Miracle get a kill on Timbersaw. Falling behind in both farm and levels, Matumba decided to join his team in the early skirmishes for tier one towers. As the game became quite even, with equal 10 to 10 kill score 14 minutes into the game, Liquid found a perfect angle to initiate OG in their own jungle and took four kills which translated into a free Aegis for Huskar. However, he was not allowed to make use of it as he lost it the second he stepped outside the pit to an AA ultimate.
After nearly 15 minutes of casual farming and quite passive Dota the two teams decided it’s time to fight and they busted in continuous, long, hard fought and very chaotic team fights, all happening in the Radiant jungle near the bottom tier two tower. Both teams traded kills and the game became extremely even and the fate of the series seemed to depend on one misplay. That misplay occurred at the 46 minute mark when Liquid’s Timbersaw was caught solo farming just outside his base and got killed with the AA ultimate. That forced a buy back from him to defend the high ground only to get sent into the fountain again by the same Chrono-AA ulti combo and OG was able to take the series in one single push.
Team Liquid ended their Summit 5 participation in the third position while OG claimed the Grand Finals spot next to Wings Gaming, the ones who sent them in the lower bracket in the first place.
