Today we start with the winner's match of Group B involving Alliance and F3. Menace and aAa, who both saw the short end of the stick yesterday, try to avoid elimination in the second match.
With the pecking order determined by yesterday's results, Alliance goes into matchday two as the clear favorite, but Flip.Sid3 themselves have every right to keep their heads held high. Following their 2:0 victory over Menace, a success today would seem even more impressive given the erratic state of the team at the moment. aAa, having looked not entirely helpless against Alliance, are given the tough but entirely possible task of defeating Menace to stay in the tournament.
Alliance vs Flip.Sid3: Alliance creative WITH Loda, but breaking a minor sweat
The return of Loda after his absence in EMS One yesterday, came with a trip down the fast lane. An obvious Level 1-Roshan draft by Alliance was either not picked up on or deliberately engaged by F3, which means the attempt at Aegis and the early cash and experience went completely uncontested. The natural conclusion was very aggressive play by the Swedes, which not only awarded Loda's Ursa with the fastest Blink Dagger in a competitive match ever, but also a swift 13-minute "gg."
Even with extensive camp-warding by the Alliance, 7ckngMad and his Enigma had no problem catching up with Akke's Chen in game two. This little fact is representative of the rest of the game. F3 was simply more efficient with their farm, and while the kill score was fairly even throughout the mid stages of the game, the team around paS (who ended the game with a superb 15-3 kill score) slowly pulled ahead in net worth. Despite being gun shy and missing a few opportunities to break the Radiant base previously, they finally found an opening to pressure both bot and mid lane enough to force Alliance to tap out.
FlipSid3 appeared eager to pick up where they left off, when Exist's Puck with the help from Dark Seer managed to take out the opposing Templar Assassin. An early lead, however, was negated after 11 minutes when Alliance managed to get a 4-1 trade on the top lane. From here on out, Loda just did his job, got his Lifestealer fed until even an abandoned Aegis in the Roshan pit didn't matter, ending the game at around 33 minutes.
Menace vs aAa: Low pace, high reward for Menace
Sifla's Ursa opened the second match with a kill on Lone Druid, followed by the first tower claimed for the Finns. As is usual with an Ursa in your line-up, Menace attempted an early Roshan, but were interrupted effectively by aAa, losing the purple bear in the process. The second time around, however, the Frenchmen overstayed their welcome at a heavy cost, giving away kills as well as the Aegis. The rest of the game was run-of-the-mill Dota, with pick-offs going in favor of Menace with their Batrider and Ursa combination. A team-fight right before the 50 minute mark gave them enough space to end the game soon after.
In game two we once again saw BanZ' signature hero, Invoker, come into play, but the lack of synergy with the other heroes on his team did not allow aAa's gank-heavy line-up to compete with Menace's farming potential. With the help of Bounty Hunter and Lifestealer, Menace slowly pulled back, until whittling down the Dire team allowed them to finish the game after roughly half an hour.
Group B culminates with FlipSid3 and Menace deciding who gets to make it to the play-offs at 6 pm CET tomorrow.
GosuWiki: RaidCall EMS One Fall
