VP and Alliance claim victories in Star Series VI opener

The first day of StarLadder VI LAN Finals came to a conclusion with Virtus.Pro and Alliance pulling ahead. iCCup and Quantic put up some solid effort but were eventually overcome and will now have to fight their way through the Lower Bracket.

Virtus.Pro vs iCCup

After a 3-hour delay, StarLadder VI Lan Finals finally got underway with Virtus.Pro going up against iCCup. VP has always been a consistent team despite their habit of getting over-aggressive while iCCup is known to be a team that can slay giants on a good day. Today, however, is not such a day.

In the first game, iCCup started out well especially on the middle lane where the Weaver played by Tamemywild was getting man-handled by Queen of Pain and Lich dual lane. VP responded to that with a rotation of the Weaver to the bottom lane and Nature's Prophet to the jungle, leaving the Queen of Pain to free farm. After 15 minutes of disarment, Outworld Devourer took over the game and dropped devastation (Sanity Eclipse), winning them every team fight since. Due to this, iCCup's core heroes were forced to buy utility items and hence, their damage output were insufficient to take a team fight against overfarmed VP heroes.

VP had another rough start in game two, losing two of their outer towers within 4 minutes of creep spawn. While that was happening, iCCup also won the other lanes and proceeded to push all over the map, taking down the towers one by one. In an attempt to take down VP's final outer tower, iCCup ran into a spectacular Vacuum to Echo Slam combo which became the turning point of the game. After that fight, iCCup became a little passive and VP immediately took over the map, farming past the river and iCCup's neutral. The Luna  had a decent chance to go up against the Alchemist but the snowball effect was too much for the poor rider to handle. With Assault Cuirass, Mjollnir, Abyssal Blade, Black King Bar and Aegis, Alchemist led his team into iCCup's base and take the first match-win of the tournament.

Alliance vs Quantic

The second series of the night saw a rematch of Dreamhack Summer 2013 Finals with Alliance and Quantic facing off against each other. For this LAN event, Quantic had to use Dominik "Black^" Reitmeier a stand-in for Sochska who injured his arm a few days ago.

Goblak displayed his signature habit of picking unconventional heroes right from the get-go, drafting a Pugna to add more pushing power alongside the Lone Druid. Alliance responded by taking the Wisp and Bounty Hunter to prevent Quantic's heroes from getting much-needed levels. The Swedes had a slightly better start due to their laning decision, while the lack of disables seemed to be the main problem for Quantic. Alliance kept forcing fights, picking off the squishy supports of Quantic and racking up the Track-kills. Quantic realized they were so far behind and made the decision to tap out before the 30-minute mark.

Alliance managed to pick up the fearful Cancer Lancer - KotL duo for game 2 and things looked great for them right from the start. Quantic decided to put Batrider in a tri-lane, a questionable decision as they kept diving into Alliance's defensive tri-lane and gave Lancer some early kills. Loda kept farming away, got bigger over time and started to split-push non-stop into Quantic's Tier 3 towers. However, Quantic defended valiantly, each time getting more and more kills on the Weaver. They even managed to wiped Alliance once but nothing came off of that. The deciding fight came at 50-minute mark with Bulldog stealing the Aegis and Alliance managed to kill off Weaver who did not have buyback. They headed straight for the throne and Quantic had no other choice but to call "gg".

Star Series VI Day Two

Tomorrow will determine both the first team to be eliminated and the first team to go into the Grand Final of StarLadder VI LAN Finals. Down in the Lower Bracket, expect iCCup and Quantic to pull out every trick in the bag to stay in the competition. In the Upper Bracket, Virtus.Pro will look to overcome the defending champions Alliance, a task not many teams can claim to have achieved.

July 5th - 15.00 CEST - iCCup vs Quantic
July 5th - 21.00 CEST - Virtus.Pro versus Alliance