The team name might not strike familiar but its roster should ring a bell for many. The four Prodota Gaming rejects plus the ex-carry of Elements Pro Gaming teamed up a day before open qualifiers and are now fighting for one of the two tickets to Seattle.
Milan 'Milan' Kozomara, Neta '33' Shapira, Greg 'Keyser' Kallianiotis, and Alexei 'j4' Lipai were dropped from Prodota Gaming on the 14th of June, nearly 10 days before the open qualifiers for The International 2017 were set to commence. Around the same date, Elements Pro Gaming went down to two players as well, leaving Uroš 'Swiftending' Gali? teamless. The newly formed team had quite an amazing run through the first batch of European opens as well, reaching the grand finals where they fell short to Loda’s stack.
Although Milan’s birthday was on the 22nd of June, a second place in the open qualifiers #1 was no reason for celebration and Planet Dog planned to gift their support player one of the best presents possible. And with that in mind, they had an undefeated run up to the qualifiers finals where they dropped the first game of the series against Rocket Scientists but stomped in the next two games to reach the grand finals.
In the grand finals, Planet Dog faced Team Moriarty, a Romanian squad that actually have been around for quite some time now, grinding their way to the top mostly in the local Dota 2 scene. Same as many other lower tier teams, Moriarty underwent countless of roster shuffles but for this year’s International open qualifiers they brought in Turtoi 'Arise' Ionut, and had one of their best performances so far by reaching the grand finals. Unfortunately for them, Planet Dog proved to be the more experienced team. Moriarty finished on the second place but hopefully this will be a good incentive for them to continue together and maybe we will hear from them again soon.
Planet Dog will continue their road to TI 7 today, in the European regional qualifiers where there are two spots up for grabs but at the same time, the competition will be a tough one as Team Secret, Mousesports, Alliance, Loda’s surprise stack, Cool Beans, Crescendo and many more are fighting for a ticket to Seattle.
TI 7 European regional qualifiers participants:
Mousesport
Crescendo
4 protect five
Team Secret
PENTA Sports
Danish Bears
Singularity
Alliance (Champions Cup winners)
Cool Beans (open qualifiers #1 Winners)
Planet Dog (open qualifier #2 winners)
The European regional qualifiers will commence today, June 26th at 10:00 CEST and will take place in two phases as follows:
Phase one:
10 teams - Round Robin group, bo1
1st place qualify to TI 7
2nd to 5th place advance to phase two
Phase two:
4 teams - Double Elimination bracket, bo3 series
Grand finals are bo5, winner qualify to TI 7
The International 2017 regional qualifiers Hub is hosted by Beyond the Summit and it’s fully packed with the best Dota 2 commentators, analysts and content creators, so make sure you tune in on their twitch.tv channels to watch the full action.
Click here for results, VODs and all the other information
