One of the two Chinese teams from Group A made it to the playoffs and it’s Invictus Gaming who survived two elimination series today.
After they defeated VG J in the first match–up of the day, Invictus Gaming managed to eliminate Alliance as well to claim their presence tomorrow in the playoffs finals of StarLadder i-league Invitational season 2. The first game held against the Swedes was quite a throw back into the TI4 era when Razor and Death Prophet were the kings of the drafts. Both heroes were picked by IG today in their opening match against Alliance and although the Chinese had Jakiro on their side as well, the game did not go fast at all.
Game One
IG avoided any sort of engagement for the entire game, and in spite of all the effort done by Alliance to find pickoffs, the Chinese perfectly dodged them. At the 42 minute mark the kill score was 7-7 and both teams were still having tier two towers up. The fate of the game was sealed only afterXu 'BurNIng' Zhilei finished the Aghanim’s Scepter as well as Refresher Orb on his Razor and IG went to demolish Alliances’ base in one swift push.
Game Two
The next game of the series picked up the pace and packed way more action. Alliance seemed like they found the perfect draft to force a decisive game three. But despite their good laning stage, their control over Roshan and and a decent transition into the mid stage of the game, Alliance started to fall behind once IG had triple Blink Daggers. Always ready to jump for a Skewer -- RP combo even on one single hero, Lin 'Xxs' Jing forced the Swedes to fight in unfavourable positions, which eventually lost them the game completely.
While Alliance are unfortunately eliminated from the tournament, IG will fight against Team Liquid tomorrow, in the opening series of the playoffs finals.
