Over yesterdays marathon run two teams came out ahead of the pack, as favourites Fnatic put in a dominant performance against mousesports after struggling at times to deliver the performance expected of them against the weaker opponents, while Team Empire turned around their game against Speed Gaming in order to secure their place in the finals as well. The finals will take place at 21:00 CET tonight.
On their way to the finals, Fnatic crushed Pretty Boy Swag before having a rougher time than expected against hehe united in the quarterfinals, ending up partially trading bases before their Io and Nature's Prophet superior mobility won out, gaining them mega creeps in what was a too close game by far. For their final opponent of the first day Fnatic stepped it up, putting in a strong performance in a high aggression set again mouz which resulted in closer to 80 kills total.
Meanwhile Team Empire made their way through familiar faces The Retry and Ahead.Kz before going up against Speed Gaming in the semi-finals. Speed were playing with their recently added 6th player Artour 'Arteezy' Babaev in place of Pittner 'bOne7' Armand, possibly in order to get some practice in with the lineup they will be playing with at MLG Columbus later this month. In the end it wasn't the stand-in which did Speed Gaming in, but their item choices which failed to capitalize on their early lead, allowing Empires Clinkz and Doom dual cores to get out of hand and take the game for Empire in the end.
The Finals
Fnatic and Empire are two teams which generally speaking should know each other well, with in particular Roman 'Scandal' Sadotenkov having a long standing friendship with the Fnatic guys. Yet for all that the teams have historically fought each other at many different events, it's been near a month and a half since the two teams last faced each other during the StarLadder Season VII groupstages. Judging by current form, Team Empire may have a lot harder time to repeat their victory against Fnatic from that competition today, as Fnatic have been taking a number of big games off the very best teams in the west lately, showing signs of a return to form that fans have been hungrily awaiting.
The finals will be broadcasted by Toby 'TobiWan' Dawson over at joinDOTA Red.