With a clean 3:0 sweep over SG e-sports, Infamous become the first South American team ever to qualify at The International.
The achievement is even bigger for the Peruvian organization, as they are in fact the first team from South America to have ever participated at a Valve sponsored event, back in 2015 when they qualified for Frankfurt Major. Back then they were Unknown.Xiu and unfortunately, after their rather amazing run, given that they were just at the beginning of their road in competitive Dota 2 scene, the team went through a lot of changes. From switching sponsors, changing the organization and going through countless roster changes, the team lost nearly all players that were at the Frankfurt Major. From that roster only Christian 'Accel' Cruz remained loyal to his manager through all the turbulent times and now he is the first South American player, who qualified for two Valve sponsored events.
Infamous roster for TI 7:
Benjamin 'Benjaz' Lanaos
Enzo 'Timado' Gianoli
Renato 'Kingteka' Garcia
Farith 'Matthew' Puente
Christian 'Accel' Cruz
Infamous' road to TI 7 begun in the SA qualifiers group stage, where they scored 7 wins to secure themselves the payoffs spot alongside Midas Club Elite, SG e-sports and Mad Kings. In the playoffs, Infamous took down the Brazilians from SG e-sports twice. The first encounter was in the upper bracket first round where the Peruvians took the series 2:0 then in the bo5 grand finals where once again SG e-sports were not able to land a single victory.
An interesting thing to note from all the Infamous vs SG e-sports matchups at these qualifiers is that the Peruvian team went with an uncommon Viper pick three times out of the six games they totally played against each other (including the group stage). In the bo1 group stage encounter Infamous lost to SG e-sports with Viper in Timado’s hands so they decided to bring back the hero in the grand finals once their opponent was decided.
Game One
In game one of the bo5 grand finals, Infamous crushed the Brazilians with a godly Queen of Pain played by Timado. Thirteen minutes into the game Timado was already level 13 and was constantly roaming securing kills with a rushed Veil of Discord first item, while SG e-sports needed the game to transition to late stage as they were running an Anti-Mage. Things went from bad to worse for SG e-sports once QoP completed her Orchid, at the 17 minute mark, which meant fighting against a double silence arsenal (QoP and Night Stalker). Anti-Mage was given no chance at finding his farm and Infamous took the game one victory by securing mega creeps 30 minutes into the game.
Game Two
For the second game of the series, Infamous brought back the Viper from group stage and went on securing a minimal starting advantage by invading the bottom dire rune spot, a move that got them the first blood and three bounty runes. However, SG e-sports were not ready to fall to the Peruvian aggressive stance and pressured Infamous’ carry Faceless Void, forcing bad Chronos and a lost laning stage. Despite the game being in their hands, SG e-sports made a huge mistake at 27 minute mark, when they killed Roshan but took too much time on deciding what to do with the Aegis which allowed Timado to snatch the Aegis from their hands while the Void jumped in with a three man Chrono nearly wiping down the entire Brazilian squad. With two lives on Viper and three heroes down on the SG e-sports side, Infamous immediately went to their adversaries base and took down all the buildings in one push to secure a 2-0 lead.
Game Three
One game away from securing a spot to The International 7, Infamous gave Viper one last run and once again they had a rough start. The laning stage went in SG e-sports favor, who pressured Timado in the mid lane, but sadly they weren’t able to capitalize on their early led. A few small mistakes or an extremely lucky situation where Infamous’ Razor escaped with less than 10 health points from ganks, and a few deep dives from SG e-sports allowed Infamous to slowly recover and at the 20 minute mark the kill score was even, 17 to 17, with SG e-sports holding only a 1K gold lead. A four man gank coming out from the Peruvians six minutes later, caught SG e-sports off guard as they lost four of their heroes, the tier one and tier two mid lane towers and all the experience and gold advantage. Taking the map control, Infamous used the vision advantage to secure two Roshan kills in a row and a clean 3-0 sweep over the ones who only two month ago were the Kiev Major South American sensation.
Infamous participating at The International 7 will most surely become another historical moment in the SA region growth. We wish them best of luck in Seattle, where they have one more big testing moment before actually getting to play on the KeyArena big stage. For this year, Valve has dropped the Wild Card competition and instead, the 18 teams participating at TI 7 will be split in two Round Robin groups from which the bottom team of each group will be eliminated, thus not getting to play in the soon to be a $20,000,000 main event. The International 7 main event will take place in Seattle at KeyArena from 7th to 12 of August in a double elimination bracket format.
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