The first few matches of WePlay Group B offered few surprises, as favourites Na`Vi and Team Liquid made their way into the winners match, while Evil Geniuses eliminated Flip.sid3.Quantic, who were playing with a rotating roster. However, by the final day things heated up as Na`Vi met Liquid in battle, only to have their fortunes turn on them.
It would be wrong to say that the 2-1 win of Team Liquid over Na`Vi was a close affair. It was far from it. In the first game, played on a European host, Na`Vi demolished the North Americans. Then as the series headed to U.S. East, fans were surprised to see Alexander 'XBOCT' Dashkevich pick up the support Crystal Maiden, allowing Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov to play his carry Luna. It was soon made clear that the reason for the swap was that XBOCT was having connection problems, although it wasn't specified if this was due to his internet in general or specifically because of unplayable ping to U.S. East that night.
hate ukrainian internet :(
— alexandr dashkevich (@NaViXBOCT) October 20, 2013
This meant that for the final and deciding match against Liquid, we saw Na`Vi play with an unknown stand-in, which resulted in a third one-sided game, as Liquid took the top billing in the group. As winners of the group, they will face Alliance in the first round of the playoffs.
XBOCT did not return for their series againt Evil Geniuses, as instead Jimmy 'DeMoN' Ho, who had been doing stats for BeyondTheSummit, stepped in, playing an offlane Earthshaker in Game 1 before taking on the carry role for the rest of the series. While there were some considerable hiccups in the first game, the group started to slowly find a feel for how they played together and turned things around, coming out on top 3-1 in the end. DeMoN, the EG Slayer, ended up playing an instrumental role in these wins, and finished the series with an impressive 22/4/28 KDA for his carry play.
By defeating Evil Geniuses, Na`Vi move on to face Team Empire in the first round of the double elimination playoff bracket. This means that we'll be looking at a possible Na`Vi-Alliance winners bracket and grand final match-up once again, in what seems to have become the standard story for the latter portion of this year. The playoffs will kick off on October 22nd with the aforementioned Na`Vi vs. Team Empire match at 18:00 CEST, followed by Team Liquid and Alliance duking it out at 21:00 CEST.
GosuGamers is also working with Datbet for the coverage of the WePlay Dota 2 tournament. Be sure to actively bet away next month for a chance to win up to 150 Euros in betting funds. More information here.
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