After a two-week break, RaidCall EMS One Fall is finally back. Big upsets were avoided in Group B, which features Alliance, F3.Quantic, Menace, and aAa.
Alphabetical order dictates that Group B follows Group A, and therefore we are going to find out who the next two teams are that will join Na'Vi and Fnatic in the live finals. The Ukranian club as well as their wholly European counterparts managed to get the better of ONE and 4FC two weeks ago, recaps of which you can read here, here and here. Today we saw the Swedish powerhouse Alliance take on aAa and Flip.Sid3 duke it out with the Finns from Menace.
Alliance vs aAa: Necessity is the mother of invention
Even without their main carry player Loda, Alliance proved themselves too strong for aAa. Their choice to play their stand-in smulgullig as a support, resulted in a feat of creativity from the Swedes. Instead of a more conventional carry, they decided to run EGM on a Tinker safe-lane, with only an Earthshaker to support, while Akke's Enchantress stuck to the enemy jungle to farm, effectively leaving both AdmiralBulldog and s4 alone in their respective lanes. aAa tried to counter the farming Tinker with a dual lane of their own, consisting of the questionable duo of Mirana and Clockwerk. Overall, their line-up seemed heavily reliant on set-ups for Invoker's Sun Strikes, which, to be fair, was one of the few redeeming factors of their draft. If it wasn't for the burst damage of these tricky combos, aAa would have gotten under the wheels of Alliance's advantageous farm and split pushing power of Tinker and Lone Druid, but this way they managed to stretch the game to 47 minutes.
The second game would have been a lot closer, if it wasn't once again for Alliance's renowned ability to distribute farm efficiently. Most of the blood shed in the game was seen on the bot lane, as aAa tried (successfully, in the beginning) to contest EGM's N'aix. Battles went back and forth, until Bounty Hunter's track kills as well as simply superior farm got the better of aAa.
Flip.Sid3 vs Menace: F3 with no reason to be menaced
The second match of tonight was considerably more straight-forward than the first. Abandoning the top lane turned out surprisingly well for F3, despite their early tower loss. An unfortunate early death by Batrider to neutrals gave the Wisp-Chaos Knight dual lane in mid enough leeway to to get a bit of a head start, but the true hero of the game was Exist and his Night Stalker. Even ineffective Wisp-relocates didn't allow Menace to take fights against Balanar as well as Dark Seers eventual level 5 Dagon.
The combination of Weaver and Treant Protector on 7ckngMad and Sokshka respectively made a return for F3 in game two. While considered a strong combo, the star to shine was once again another. This time around it miGGel on Bounty Hunter who made all the important plays to find kills all over the map. Even team-fights for which Menace found the perfect initiation with the help of daco's Naga Siren's Song and spinzter's Dark Seer's Vacuum couldn't be finished in their favor. The result is a "gg" after roughly 27 minutes, just as long as the first game.
Tomorrow we see the two winners, Alliance and Flip.Sid3, fight for the first spot in the playoffs, while the two losers decide who has to leave early.
GosuWiki: RaidCall EMS One Fall
