Day one of the Masters Manila kicked off with two explosive series. Recently shuffled Team Secret faced off a super aggressive Newbee while OG’s strengths were tested by the new NP roster.
Although the first day of the event begun with some considerable delays, internet and sound issues preventing the teams to start on schedule, once the games actually began, both series delivered full action packed games.
OG and NP were the first to clash, and the four time Major Champions took game one from Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao’s reunited Cloud 9 old friends with a draft built for continuous team fights. Kunkkas’s boat, Void’s Chrono, Vacuum-Wall and Phoenix- Egg were the five ultimates that allowed OG to ensure success in every team fight, at any given stage of the game. Capable to fight with only two or three of these big spells off cooldown, OG had no issue controlling NP’s Bristleback-KotL duo.
In the second game however, OG got overwhelmed by NP’s aggression, who pushed the series to a decisive game three with a Treant Protector-Puck combo and a super active laning stage where everyone was constantly rotating. NP repeated the same aggressive tactic in game three, but with a different hero line-up. They started with an aggressive trilane which actually turned into a four man early tower push and kept on running into OG but despite their efforts to maintain the good lead they secured in the laning stage, OG turned around a few key fights with their Terrorblade and changed the fate of the series. In the end OG emerged victorious, securing a spot in the semifinals while NP will have to fight for their tournament lives in the lower bracket.
The Team Secret vs Newbee best-of-three series was also played in a very fast pace, both teams looking for drafts emphasizing the early push. Secret went with heavy right click damage dealers in game one, namely Terrorblade and Outworld Devourer along with a Jakiro, but their push strategy was countered with a last pick Sniper coming out from Newbee. The Chinese reserved all their crowd control spells for TB and OD to allow Song 'Sccc' Chun to take them down with his sniper and pretty much shut down Secret from the early laning stage till the end of the game.
Secret came back in game two with the same idea of pushing towers fast and although they made clear their intentions with Jakiro and Troll Warlord picked in the first phase of the draft, they still surprised Newbee with a Broodmother last pick. Only 20 minutes into the game Secret were already taking down the first tier three tower forcing Newbee to admit defeat in around 25 minutes. Secret changed tactic with the last game of the series. They tried a ganking oriented line-up with a Bristle-Io duo, but then again they got countered with a core Silencer and strong ganking support duo of Newbee. Crystal Maiden and Night Stalker were much more effective during the laning stage for Newbee who didn’t allow Secret to grow their mid lane Medusa big enough to create problems.
With their victory in the opening series of Masters Manila, Newbee are joining OG in the upper bracket semifinals while Team Secret will fight against NP in the first round of the lower bracket.
The first day of Masters Manila continues with Clutch Gamers taking on Invictus Gaming and Evil Geniuses fighting against Faceless, followed in the second part of the day by the upper bracket semifinals matches.
