picture courtesy of PGL
The Kiev Major kicked off today with its group stages and we witnessed some spectacular Dota 2 action from all teams involved - none more so than the iG versus OG rematch.
After Invictus Gaming were crowned champions at the Dota 2 Asia Championships, beating out OG 3-0 in the finals, OG would be looking to exact some revenge. With the Kiev Major Group stages in full swing, and round 2 pitting the two giants up against each other – would OG be able to take down their opponents in the 2nd round of the Swiss-style format?
With a previous success on the Arc Warden, OG decided to draft it for n0tail in the first game of the series but the aggressive playstyle that came out from iG right from the start meant that not even Johan 'n0tail' Sundstein could carry OG out of the pit they saw themselves in. Ye 'BoBoKa' Zhibiao, much like he did during the DAC finals, was everywhere – making space and setting up kills for his team while being a constant Earth Spirit shaped thorn in OG’s side. This helped the Chinese team to a fairly basic victory.
The series continued to a far greater peak and became even more exciting to watch – as OG allowed BoBoKa onto his famous Riki but proceeded to stomp the Chinese team into the ground for the first forty minutes. But that wasn’t enough to keep iG down. While OG continued to stay far ahead in kills, Xu 'BurNing' Zhilei kept them on par if not ahead at most times on the net-worth graphs. As his team made space around the map, even though it meant a fair few deaths and objectives being paid as a toll, BurNing on his Anti-Mage became basically untouchable. iG managed to rip through the Radiant’s line-up with some fantastic stall play and even after being behind on the scoreboard for the entire match, iG showed the true “never-give-up” attitude that we love to see in Dota 2.
Both teams played some of the most amazing Dota and definitely deserve to be held in high regard after their respective performances. For iG, they come out ahead – looking set to have a fantastic Kiev Major, and the same can definitely said for OG who played their hearts out but in the end succumbed to iG’s dominance.
The action has just begun at The Kiev Major - with this being merely day one of the group stages. I, for one, am sure we will see many more games like this.
