Four matches took place on the first day of ESL One NYC, and the first victims of the single-elimination bracket were Na'Vi, Na'Vi.US, Alliance and Sneaky Nyx Assassins. The semi-finals will be played tomorrow, with SecretTeam facing ViCi Gaming and EG going against Cloud 9.
The offline finals of ESL One New York have finally arrived, and eight of the strongest teams in the world have gathered at Madison Square Garden for the event. Now that the first day belongs to the past, the first round (quarter finals) has been played with four matches in total. Due to the single-elimination format of the tournament, the teams that were defeated today have been eliminated from the tournament.
The first day opened with the match between Na'Vi and ViCi Gaming, with the Ukrainian squad opting for a rather unusual lineup in the initial match. However, the Ursa-Ogre-Undying selections were unsuccessful against the familiar tri-core lineup of ViCi. Na'Vi showed a better face in the second match, shutting down the enemy Io-Tiny combination with ease. The third and final victory went to ViCi, with the Chinese using iceiceice's signature Elder Titan combined with Sand King to unleash massive amounts of damage during the continuous teamfights they forced.
Secret Team seemed to have an easy task against Na'Vi.US, holding an exhibition of dominance from the first minutes of the best-of-three series. The European squad opened the match with a semi four-protect-one lineup with Medusa, but the game was over before the hero shows her true strength due to the spot-on rotations and execution of her teammates. The second match was more of a challenge due to tanky selections of Na'Vi.US (Clockwerk-Brewmaster-Razor), but a solid teamfight near the Roshan pit gave an uncontrollable advantage to Puppey's boys.
The series between the two affiliated eSports brands will most likely be remembered for quite some time. The first game saw Evil Geniuses take an early lead, executing a heavy push strat with a farming Jakiro. Giving away a bit of space and kills, EG opened a window for Loda to farm up on his Anti-Mage and thus draw the game out on the verge of turning it. The North-Americans still managed to win the game by splitpushing their way to the throne. The second game turned into yet another nailbiter, once more with EG missing their window to finish off things. This time around however, Loda's Terrorblade in combination with Akke's Silencer and clutch Rubick plays by MiSeRy secured the Swedes the equalizer in the series. The match however took an anti-climactic turn with EG stomping their way through the third game and Arteezy's PA dictated the pace of the game, disallowing Alliance's line-up from coming online.
Cloud 9 vs. Sneaky Nyx Assassins
Cloud9 snowballed their way through game 1, picking up early kills and good farm on Envy to secure him a timely "shotgun" for his Morphling. Together with bOne7's Legion Commander, Cloud 9 steamrolled over SNA despite a few hiccups. The second game was a much closer endeveaour with Sneaky Nyx Assassins finding multiple pickoffs. C9's teamfight potential however outclassed SNA's line-up and the Europeans sealed the deal in a convincing fashion.
Rotator and news pictures by Helena Kristiansson, found on ESL Flickr
