picture courtesy of eslgaming
Team Max is the second and last team to advance in the Chinese regional qualifiers after Vici Gaming won the first session.
The Kiev Major is going to be the second one (after the Manila Major) that EHOME will totally miss, as none of their squads survived through the open qualifiers. EHOME.Keen reached the grand finals in both of the open qualifiers but got defeated by Vici Gaming, in the first session, and by Team Max today.
In the second grand final, EHOME.Keen lost the first match to a ganking oriented lineup from Team Max, who ran a roaming Pudge-Rubick support duo, keeping EHOME.K under control for the entire laning stage. EHOME.K prepared a heavy healing lineup for the second game, with Dazzle and Undying to survive their adversary’s early aggression, which allowed them to push the series into a decisive game three. However, they changed the tactic for the last game and went with a Riki - Lifestealer infest bomb combo, alongside a greedy Magnus-Faceless Void, RP into Chrono, team fight strategy which in the end cost them the spot in the Chinese regional qualifiers.
With the open qualifiers chapter finished and the champions qualifiers won by Young Elite, the regional qualifiers are ready to kick off. China will commence the battle a day later than the other regions, on March 11 at 10:00 CST/03:00 CET. All ten teams will start the regional qualifiers by playing each other in a best-of-one round robin group stage. At the end of the group stage only the top four squads will advance into a double elimination playoff, which will decide which two teams will qualify for the Kiev Major. China and Southeast Asia are the only regions that will get to send two teams to Kiev from the qualifiers.
