The third day of the World Cyber Arena came to a close and saw TI4 champion Newbee reign victorious once more. In the lower bracket, Cloud 9 was able to fight their way through, taking out Team Malaysia, Vici Gaming and Alliance in a row.
World Cyber Arena has narrowed it down to two teams and the grand finals are set. NewBee from the East and Cloud9 from the West will face off in the ultimate best-of-five series for the impressive $325,000 prizepool.
The third day was rather relaxing for NewBee as they only had to play one best-of-three match against Alliance at 3:15 CEST. The TI4 champions did not have an easy task against the Swedes in the first game, but the Ravage/Doom/Exorcism arsenal was enough to contain Loda's well-farmed Antimage - even after 55 minutes of gameplay. The second game was much shorter, with NewBee successfully using a strategy similar to Alliance in game one, but with the suitable Luna selection instead of the Antimage.
In the lower bracket, both Team Malaysia and LGD-Gaming fell short 0-2 to Cloud 9 and Vici Gaming respectively. These two teams then met in the match afterwards, with Cloud9 grabbing an early 1-0 lead. The second game looked to be a victory for the Europeans as well, but Vici Gaming managed to turn it around. The third game was a dominant display from C9 once more and the team around captain Jacky 'EternalEnvy' Mao moved onto the lower bracket's finals.
The match between Cloud9 and Alliance proved to be a nailbiter from the getgo, with technical issues overshadowing the match once more. The first match lasted more than two hours, but the ending result was a tie (1-1) as the continuous disconnects prevented a normal conclusion to the game. Much like yesterday's match between Na'Vi and LGD, the second game of the series had to be held locally, with Cloud9 using their favorite Drow Ranger-Visage combination to secure the victory.
The Grand Final will be held tomorrow at 10:00 CEST, in best-of-five format, with NewBee receiving a game advantage due to their Upper Bracket victory. Live broadcasting of the game will be provided by BeyondTheSummit in English and SLTV in Russian.