After a hard fought best of three, iG defeated LGD and book their tickets to the US. This best of three series with quite a few interesting picks concludes the Red Bull Battle Grounds Chinese qualifiers.
After a gruelling and long day, Invictus Gaming were able to take down LGD to secure their spot at the Red Bull Battle Grounds LAN finals that will be happening from May 5, in Santa Monica and San Francisco. iG will be joining four other teams there, of which only the SEA representative, Team MY, has been decided.
iG entered the finals through the loser bracket after LGD Gaming knocked them down in the first round of the qualifiers. Their journey to turn up as the eventual winner was a long one as they had to play two dangerous best-of-one series against EHOME and Newbee before making it to the best-of-three grand final. Despite the clear fatigue issues, the odds for the match according to our Gosubet was dead even at 50:50, an extremely rare occurence. This occurrence shows how these two teams with a 2-2 record in the past month are very close in skill and could beat one another anytime.
The final match of the day was extremely close and pushed both the teams to their limits as all three games went long and highly contested. The matches featured quite a few interesting drafts and showed how well the two giants of Chinese Dota understand each other with multiple gank predictions among others. This is also a testament to how much these two teams actually play each other and iG's understanding of what mistakes were made the last time, after losing to LGD earlier in the day.
The next Red Bull Battle Grounds qualifier to take centre stage will be the CIS region. The qualifier will take place on the 16th of April and will feature Empire, Asus.Polar, Na`Vi and HellRaisers.
Game 1
Starting off with a Wisp Chaos Knight pick, iG revealed their strategy from the beginning, allowing LGD plenty of time of counter pick against iG's single target control line up. This allowed LGD to get a strong lead in the mid game and take majority of iG's outer towers, however, iG kept defending until Rosh revived. They ventured out in desperation to block LGD's Rosh attempt. The result was a pick off followed by multiple kills on heroes who bought back scored by IG and the Rosh going to them as well.
With the heroes on LGD dead, the aegis on their side, and Chaos Knight's ultimate off cooldown, iG pushed mid and took mega creeps with the help of Chaos Knight illusions which cut through LGD's raxes with ease; forcing out the GG call from LGD.
Game 2
Game 2 featured unorthodox picks from both teams, with iG running a jungle Lycan and LGD running a offlane Earth Shaker. The game started off with the momentum going in LGD's favor after an extremely well timed tp by Juggernaut to mid scored him a triple kill when iG attempted to gank mid. However, the lead was quickly lost as iG managed to counter gank LGD at the bottom lane, taking down four LGD heroes and Rosh.
iG then kept building on their lead, slowly amassing a 5k lead. But as Rosh revived and LGD and iG went for it Lion was tried to initiate but was caught by an omni slash, killing him and leaving iG exposed, the result was heavy losses on iG and the lost of the lead they have amassed. Riding this momentum, LGD pushed high ground and succeeded; equaling the game score to 1-1.
Game 3
The game started slow albeit the aggressive tri-lane ran by iG, following the passive early game, LGD's wisp rotated to the mid lane to score the first blood. But after the first blood, the Spirit Breaker charged the wisp and killed it. After this, it was rinse and repeat for the Spirit Breaker, killing Lina and Viper; building a slight lead for iG.
As the game went on, iG tries to build on the slight lead created by their Spirit Breaker, however, when LGD found a pick off on their Juggernaut at bottom lane followed by a kill on Witch Doctor as well, the lead disappeared. Following this, the game was equal until a smoke gank to secure Rosh by LGD went sour, with them losing four and Aegis for nothing to iG. Riding this momentum, iG tries for high ground but backs off after realizing that they cannot keep going. After a short period of farming, iG found a pick off on Viper and took LGD's mid melee rax.
After the taking of the mid rax, iG kept farming and denied LGD's carries of any farm. With their ever-building gold lead, they took a team fight, their revenge on LGD for sending them to the losers bracket and book their tickets to Santa Monica.
Headline images by Invictus Gaming
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