World Cup Day 2: Match Reports

Day 2 of the World Cup, as the remaining 18 teams faced off for the 9 remaining slots in the winner's bracket. Considering it was still a 1st round of the playoffs some spectacular plays were done, although upsets were rare.

Epic vs Pro Sex Inc.
Game 1		Game 2
ICE		ICE
PSi		PSi

1 hero, 2 builds, 1 outcome
Day 2 kicked off with an all-American showdown between up and coming top team Epic and Pro Sex Inc. Both games were won fairly easily by Team Epic, but what was note worthy was JoshP's interesting approach to playing Soulstealer, going 2 different styles of play in both games.

While Game 1 featured the usual Soulstealer solo mid set-up, JoshP decided to go for a mass regeneration build, opting to pick Blood Chalice followed by a Nullstone. Also having a post-haste, his farm skyrocketed past the 500 GPM by the time the game ended. Game 2 was a little more peculiar as 2 heroes who aren't usually part of trilanes, Hellbringer and Soulstealer were assigned to the bottom lane by Team Epic along with Andromeda. Surprisingly the results were complete dominance by Team Epic against PSi's more conventional melee carry + dual babysitter trilane, with Soulstealer opting to go for an early Iron Shield along with Ghost Marchers to abuse his killing capability due to his high early damage and triple nukes.

Game 2 ended particularly early thanks to ICE's dominance at pretty much all lanes. By the 17th minute mark, eventhough PSi made the ideal initiation, taking out Arachna and Soulstealer before the fight began, Soulstealer bought back immediately and wiped out the Hellbourne team with his remaining teammates. PSi then conceded.

Interpol vs Goat
Game 1		Game 2
GT		IPL
IPL		GT

U mad bro?
The 2nd game of the day was between the oceanic dark horses Interpol against the sole Malaysian team in the tournament, Goat. The 1st game was fairly slow-paced, considering it had the likes of Pebbles, Thunderbringer, Bubbles and Valkyrie in the mix. Bloodhunter, which seems to be a feature of SEA teams in the current tourney fails for the 1st time. Goat as a team disappointingly did not play aggressive enough ( or were outplayed too hard ) and subsequently were unable to provide Sand Wraith the farm he needed to carry the game. The game ended on a rather sour note as the GGs offered by IPL were met by rather rude words from Goat.

The banter continued in game 2, with both teams taunting each other non-stop after every kill, to the point where admins were forced to step in and demand that both teams behave. The game once again started slow but fortunately action picked up after the first 15 minutes or so, with teamfight after teamfight occuring, majority in favour of IPL. The game ends with an epic fight in the fountain with `Cujo's Maliken too farmed for Goat to put down.

Carryziah!
Remember back in the day when there was a forum game called Outpicked? One particular match back in the day which is still probably remembered by many was kirbyruled's infamous Carryziah. Well, it's happened again, post-patch as well when many believed he was back to Omniknight status. Unfortunately for unZ it appears that majority were right. Eventhough Jereziah was babysat against a solo Pharoah, he really didn't have that much of an impact as a carry in the game. Nevertheless it was fun to watch and kudos on the effort. It appeared to be a reversal of roles as their carry Dr. Repulsor decided to go for a Tablet of Command, which could only puzzle one who was watching. Bad communication probably on unZ's part coupled with some unfortunate invis runes for PLOW caused unZ members to get picked off before most team fights, with PLOW eventually cementing their win by 42 minutes.

It was as if the loss of the first game did not demoralize but brought out the pedigree of unZ instead. Beginning the game with a roaring start unZ kept the momentum and just kept going. Revvy on Pestilence secured an early portal key and the game was pretty much over by then. PLOW realised that all efforts to turn the game around will be futile and conceded at the 20th minute mark.

Game 3 started full of promise right from the drafting as PLOW went for a crazy stun heavy lineup, with melee heavy duty stun trio Pebbles, Behemoth and Magmus all in the same team. Both teams by coincidence sent all 5 down to the legion jungle in hopes of catching 2~3 players, instead an all-out 5v5 teamfight erupted before the timer even hit 0. PLOW with their mass stuns, grabbed an early 3-0 hero kill lead. unZ decided to improvise from their 2nd game lineup which worked so well for them, and added Predator in replacement of their solo mid Flint Beastwood to complete a minus armour oriented lineup. Soender aka Hubris` on solo mid Predator secured a 300 GPM against class's Pebbles, and a series of good ganks pulled unZ back into the game. Things looked worse for PLOW as Pestilence got an earlier portal key than the 2nd game, getting it by the 9th minute. Eventhough the gold count was practically identical at the time, the early portal key will soon prove to be a factor as unZ force teamfight after teamfight with their initiation advantage. Eventually their minor 1k gold lead snowballed to a whopping lead of over 20k in 9 minutes. PLOW concedes at the 27th minute mark.

Empire Multigaming vs fap fap fap
Game 1		Game 2
Empr		F4P
F4P		Empr

For Mother Russia!
Both Russian teams Empire and Cats managed to progress to the 2nd round of the winner's bracket. However how they got there was a slightly different story. Empire Multigaming had no problems at all sweeping aside German team F4P to grab 2 games in a row, both featuring Armadon which seems to have replaced The Dark Lady as their trilane carry of choice. 1st game was decided within the 1st 10 minutes as Scandal was not only given complete freefarm of the bottom but also 3 kills on his opposing Thunderbringer, and rushing down the tier 1 tower to boot. While all that was going on, Empr, bolstered by the return of Phe`V and their recent addition of YoImhere4you ( Vein from DotA), were at least winning their lanes. Game was over towards the 30 minute mark as PheV and Scandal were wreaking havoc all across the map.

Game 2 was basically the same story as game 1, with the exception that the free farm was given to Phe`V this time. People who just begin to follow the competitive scene often wonder why Wretched Hag is often banned against Empr specifically, well this is why.



Phe`V managed an annihilation within 14 minutes of the game. Game was conceded around the 27 minute mark with a 29-51 hero kill score but in all honesty had Empire not goofed around and overextended themselves on many occassions the gap could have been wider.

Meanwhile, their comrades Cats got off to a bright start as their trilane demolished Team's trilane in the opening of the 1st game. Pandamonium was gimped to the point where he had to pick up Striders in order to start farming up his Shrunken Head. Cats capitalized on the momentum they had and took game 1 with a 16-35 hero kill score.

Game 2 started off fairly even, but Team were getting some small advantages after every series of ganks / fights. They eventually amounted up to something significant as Team won a mid game teamfight and claimed Kongor. Witch Slayer and Pyromancer had their portal keys by this point, and Cats conceded shortly after.

Both teams adopted a fairly cautious approach to game 3, which Cats managed to take advantage of by introducing Sand Wraith into the fray. As the game progressed towards mid game a slight advantage was in Team's favour. However, the tide turned after a series of failed pushes at the bottom lane resulting in Genocides for the Hellbourne team. Sand Wraith had gotten his Mock of Brilliance at this point and showed no signs of slowing down. Scorp121 on Wretched Hag emulated his Russian counterpart Phe`V with an annihilation of his own at a rune fight at the 33rd minute. Desperate to turn things around, the Hellbourne team attempted Kongor, only for it to be intercepted by the Legion team, killing most of the Hellbourne in the process, and proceeded to get the mid raxes. Team finally conceded when a final genocide happened at the top lane. The EXP lead for Cats was 36k by that point, with Wretched Hag being at a level equivalent of Andromeda and Pyromancer's level combined.

So close, yet so far...
Favourites to the match-up TS-Gaming suffered a scare as utbg really brought the game to them. Horribly outpicked in game 1, TS-Gaming's weak Plague Rider-Soulstealer combination was effectively shut down by utbg. By mid game utbg's trio of Valkyrie, Flint Beastwood and Pebbles were all getting amazing farm with kills to boot. Not wanting to go down without a fight, TS-Gaming attempted to intercept utbg's Kongor, but was genocided instead. TS-Gaming conceded when they lost the final teamfight at their base mid.

Game 2 gave the impression that utbg was likely to pull off a major upset as all game stats were in their favour while heroes like Magmus, Witch Slayer and Swiftblade had gotten their core items in reasonable time. However, a couple of mistakes by utbg followed up with superb teamplay by a TS-Gaming side who were rapidly gaining momentum. PapaDrayich led by example by landing some amazing arrows to set up winning teamfights. The tide was effectively turned and TSoG never looked back. utbg conceded at the 51 minute mark.

A reversal of game 1 occured in game 3 as this time it as utbg who got outpicked, picking a side which lacked crowd control and while pinning their hopes on a Sand Wraith, did not really had a side which was capable of stalling the game 4v5 long enough for Sand Wraith to farm up. An epic moment ensued at the 14th minute as XoYnoZnU on Devourer landed a hook on an invisible Pharoah near the Legion top tier 1 tower. Their mass ganking strat with multiple diablers worked like a charm as TS-Gaming steamrolled utbg into a 30 minute concede.

Bombs away!
The games between DRD vs 544 and eG vs Go offered a lot of promise as Bombardier, fresh from his implementation in the game immediately saw competitive play. Although his appearance in DRD's 2nd game was apparently somewhat of a joke, chu of Evil Geniuses once again sets the standard of how a new hero is played with a dominating performance against Go.

Dotally rad dot com, while notorious for "bad mannerism" certainly showed their skills as they dominated 544 in the opening game, storming to a 20k EXP and 16k Gold lead by the 20 minute mark. Good performances all around however, caused them to get too complacent and allegedly decided to go for a fun lineup in the 2nd game, with 4 intelligence nukers supporting the infamous "noob" hero - Scout. However, in all fairness, DRD were in a comfortable lead for a significant amount of time in game 2. The game was turned around arguably by some questionable decisions by scout. His decision to grab a Shrunken Head instead of more burst DPS didn't seem to be a good one as it didn't enable him to do much in teamfights as DRD got genocided twice around Kongor, and even losing Kongor to 544 as a result. Another costly error on Moonmeander's part was probably not carrying a Homecoming Stone while pushing the top lane alone, resulting in him returning late for a teamfight when the battle was already won by 544.

Realising things were getting out of hand, DRD decided to concede and start afresh in game 3, this time even convincing core player WaC to participate. They truely showed that this time they meant business by scoring a bloodlust kill when the timer was just at 0:06. DRD eventually outplayed 544, with KingRaven baiting all of 544's ultimates in a top lane gank, while his team took down Kongor and pushed mid. Powerless without their ultimates, 544 crumbled easily. The hero kill score at the end was 27-36.

Evil Geniuses vs Global Core Gamers
Game 1		Game 2
Go		eG
eG		Go

Nothing much to comment about this match-up. As expected hot favourites Evil Geniuses strolled to an easy victory. What is probably noteworthy was chu's play on new hero Bombardier, displaying good use of his Boom Dust ability to maximize his farming capacity. The rest was pretty much routine for Evil Geniuses as it looks like it would take something exceptionally special to stop them from going all the way in the World Cup.