picture courtesy of Evil Geniuses
The two International Champions, Evil Geniuses in 2015 and Wings Gaming in 2016, faced each other in the last series of the fourth day at the Summit 6--with their own survival at stake.
Game One
Wings Gaming started their series against EG with a healing duo Oracle - Treant Protector that had the potential to make them very resilient in both skirmishes and teamfights. They proceeded with aggression by sniping the courier before the first minute mark, a move courtesy of Li 'iceice' Peng’s Treant who read perfectly EG’s intention to jungle the Venomancer. Iceice dived into the enemy woods to annoy Zai to the point where he had to abandon the farming mission.
The first blood was also scored by Wings in the top lane by Andreas Franck 'Cr1t-'Nielsen playing Ogre Magi. From there on almost nothing went EG’s way. Ganks were unsuccessful even with Chronosphere as Treant and Oracle were saving their teammates all the time, towers didn’t go down--again courtesy of the Treant heals--and while EG was banging their head against a tier one tower at the 18 minute mark, Zhou 'bLink' Yang was already split pushing and hitting EG’s tier three tower top lane. Five minutes later EG called out the GG, hoping for a better draft and execution in game two.
Game Two
Although the second game featured the same support duo, Venomancer - Ogre Magi for EG, the story unfolded in a completely different manner. Both teams had cores that scale better towards the mid stage of the game, so the laning stage was quiet. However, EG were the ones to play a bit more aggressively and secured the few kills that happened during the laning stage. With a 0-3 deficit eleven minutes into the game, Wings secured their first kill by committing the Chronosphere to stop EG’s tier one push in the bottom lane. The one going down on the EG side, however, was the support Venomancer.
Saahil 'UNiVeRsE' Arora’s Beastmaster Hawks for superior vision and Arteezy’s Anti-Mage early presence in team fights allowed EG to corner Wings in their own base. EG also controlled the Roshan spawns. With a six-slotted AM before the 30 minute mark and with the Aegis on him, EG forced the TI6 Champions into a decisive game three.
Game Three
EG went with a draft that seemed to be aimed at a fast paced game three. Wings tried to match the boys in blue with their picks, but they missed the mark as the NA team reserved the last pick for a Morphling Arteezy. Wings were left with Luna, Axe, and Sniper as cores and suffered a disastrous laning stage. Eg was leading with nine kills to nothing as Wings fell behind quickly and were not able to keep their Luna alive in any engagement. EG’s good start translated in a 23 minute Ethereal Blade on the Morphling and a very smooth transition towards a late game scenario where Wings were still looking extremely weak.
Playing again on the Dire side, EG had no problem securing every Roshan kill; however, they faced a resilient Chinese team on the high ground as the Chaotic Offering into Ghostship was a scary combo to fight against. Despite the great efforts from Luna to catch up in terms of farm, Wings couldn’t recover towards the late game and got eliminated from The Summit 6.
Evil Geniuses is now one step away from the Grand Finals, their last pit stop being the matchup against OG in the lower bracket finals. Last day at the Summit 6 will commence at 10:00 PST/19:00 CET with the lower bracket finals and will continue with the Grand Finals scheduled for 13:30 PST/22:30 CET.
