picture courtesy of esl-gaming
The first day of the StarLadder i-League Star Series will be full of group A matches. The opening act in Shanghai, China was staged between the the triple Major Champions, OG and the Filipino sensation, TNC.
Game One:
The series kicked off with two drafts built for teamfights, OG with a slight advantage for the early skirmishes due to their Pudge-Axe combo. TNC read their intention very well and preemptively drafted Timbersaw to counter OG’s last pick Meepo.
Although the early laning stage should have gone in OG’s favor, Sam 'Sam_H' Enojosa Hidalgo didn’t get caught a single time by the Pudge hook, and TNC were the ones to score the first blood. It happened mid lane, where Carlo 'Kuku' Palad baited Anathan 'ana' Pham with an intentional Healing Slave cancel and turned on him to take the kill.
However, around the four minute mark, OG rotated their Meepo to jungle farming and let Tal 'Fly' Aizik to get his level six in the offlane. Both teams focused on farming up until TNC felt they are ready to group up for a tier one mid lane push in order to open themselves an easier Roshan. They caught Ana’s Ember Spirit overreaching, killed him and attempted to take the tower with the one man advantage. But Ana bought back and turned the fight around for his team. After the successful tower defense, OG secured the first Roshan kill of the game for Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein’s Meepo. With the momentum on their side, OG started to recover slowly after the rather poor game start. Their ‘four protect one’ strategy proved to be very effective as N0tail became harder and harder to kill. It took OG three Roshan kills and a couple of high ground attempts before finally breaking TNC base close to the 50 minute mark.
Game Two:
The second game went to OG from the drafting stage. The Major Champions secured a heavy pushing line-up with Lone Druid and Chen while TNC didn’t have any real answer to that strategy. The Filipino team might have taken the kill advantage during the laning stage but OG stuck to their plan and the Dire side was left with only one tier two tower still up by the 12 minute mark. Continuously pressured by OG’s push and with a farming disadvantage, TNC eventually lost the series 2-0 and will have to fight for the playoffs spot from the lower bracket.
The first day of StarLadder i-League Star Series Season 3 continues with the group A matches as follows:
February 23, 13:00 CST/ 06:00 CET: Secret vs iG.Vitality
February 23, 16:00 CST/ 09:00 CET: OG vs TBD (Winner‘s Final)
