Fnatic eliminate Alliance in a 2-0 victory securing themselves a top eight seed at The International.
Day three of The International 6 began with a lower bracket elimination match between Alliance and Fnatic. The winner of the best of three series will move on to secure a top eight seed in The International and a guaranteed prize of over $500,000.
Game One:
Game one started out with a pretty standard draft for these two teams – especially in the current meta for the game. Both Alliance and Fnatic played a pretty passive early game with first blood going to Gustav ‘s4’ Magnusson around the three and a half minute mark when he was able to pick off Nai ‘MidOne’ Zhenf Yeik in the mid lane with the help of Jerry ‘EGM’ Lundkvist’s Elder Titan. At the ten minute mark, we only saw a combined four kills for this match as both teams were preoccupied farming. Even as Alliance continued to take a tier two tower bottom just 12 minutes into the game, we saw Yee ‘MuShi’ Fung Chai farming away on the opposite side of the map. This strategy helped to sky rocket the Sven’s networth creating quite a sizeable gap between him and the rest of the players in the match. This, of course, was with the help of Fnatic having a Bounty Hunter on their team constantly placing aggressive wards on the map so Sven always knew where he would be safe farming and where to avoid. At the 40 minute mark Alliance attempted to take Roshan, but Fnatic got the last hit and Bounty Hunter grabbed the aegis. This resulted in a full on team fight where Alliance lost everyone but Mirana and Fnatic only losing aegis and Slardar.
From there on, Alliance became trapped in their base slowly losing their barracks to disrupted Sven illusions. At the 62 Minute mark, Fnatic forced a high ground push, effectively taking out Henrik ‘AdmiralBulldog’ Ahnberg’s Tidehunter before he was able to use Ravage and with him unable to buyback, Alliance took a massive hit in their team fight abilities. They used three buybacks on the rest of the team, one right after another, but no one on Fnatic fell and MidOne’s Storm Spirit even got an ultra-kill in the process, thus forcing Alliance to call GG by 63 minutes. The final kill count for game one was Alliance with 16 total kills and Fnatic with 32.
Game Two:
Alliance opted to pick their most comfortable heroes coming into game number two and they certainly showed their confidence with their early game aggression – quite the change from game one. At only 30 seconds into the match s4 was able to secure first blood near the top rune by picking off Chong ‘Ohaiyo’ Xin Khoo’s Batrider. From this very moment on, Alliance kept up the aggressive, in your face, tactics to prevent Fnatic from finding any farm on the map. By 15 minutes into the game, Alliance had found themselves a total of 13 kills whereas Fnatic could only secure three. The 20 minute mark of the game looked to be highly in favor of Alliance when they had nearly a 10K gold lead over Fnatic. It was just before the 30 minute mark that the game seemed to turn into Fnatics favor. Alliance took an untimely fight in the top lane where Fnatic’s response was on point and it resulted in a four hero loss for Alliance. Immediately after this fight took place Alliance opted to take Roshan and then pressured the top set of barracks. Unfortunately, an infested s4 ate an arrow and met an early fate causing Fnatic to not only defend their top lane, but also take out three heroes in the process. By the 37 minute mark Fnatic make a high ground push after picking off both Lifestealer and Puck near the bottom tier two tower. Without two of their cores, Alliance was forced to watch as their base crumbled. Fnatic immediately goes for the mid set of barracks after clearing out bottom. In the process, they create a full team wipe on the side of Alliance and they were forced to call GG as Fnatic attacked their ancient at the 39 minute mark.
Overall in this series we saw Alliance adapt very well to their mistakes in game number one and really bring their all in game two, but Fnatic were just too patient and too calculated in their movements. They saw weakness and they capitalized on it every time. The 2-0 defeat brings forth the elimination of Alliance from The International, and a guaranteed top 8 placement for Fnatic.
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