The second series from The International 5 Upper Bracket ended up with Team Secret dropping their first series in the main event and the Chinese qualifiers winners, EHOME securing top six place.
Game One:
EHOME tricked Team Secret into thinking they are focusing their draft around Cty with a strong pickoff strategy with Storm Spirit plus Bounty Hunter and Secret took the bait as they tried to counter that with a Spirit Breaker for Zai and with a lineup favoring strong single target spells and no lock downs.
But the EHOME master plan was revealed with the last pick, a Phoenix for rOtk that turned their draft into a massive teamfight oriented one with a very strong wombo combo Supernova into Winter Curse into Call Dawn.
The game started really good for Secret who secured the first blood in the river at the first bounty rune and had a great laning phase for Arteezy on Shadow Fiend who was on a dominating kill streak in the early game. Also the Spirit Breaker counter pick worked as a charm, Zai shutting down any gank attempt that came from Cty.
20 minutes into the game Secret had a huge lead and EHOME was looking like they've already lost the game but as both teams smoked at the same time, a huge clash occurred in EHOME’s jungle and for the first time the Chinese team managed to land their ultimates combo winning the team fight and securing a 4k experience swing in their favor.
Five minutes later EHOME also managed to win a weird skirmish fight around the Roshan Pit and grabbed the aegis for Zy’s Gyrocopter and with that they started to threaten Secret’s towers. Another big team fight was won by EHOME who perfectly landed their wombo combo once again on Secret’s heroes and they were fully back in the game.
Claiming Secret’s gem of truesight EHOME put Puppey’s team in the darkness which allowed them to get important pickoffs and two courier snipes in a row. Trapped in their own base, Secret lost the game control completely and fell behind very fast.
At the 43 minute mark EHOME decided to go for their first high ground push and once again they had a perfect teamfight execution and wiped out Secret securing two lanes of barracks and the first game as Secret called out the GG.
Game Two:
One loss away from the Lower Bracket Secret went for an usual draft with Shadow Fiend first pick followed by Anti-Mage which allowed rOtk to immediately figured out their intentions and shut down their entire lineup with a Night Stalker last pick that turned to be the winning move.
Mirorring the previous game start, Secret got the first blood at the starting bounty rune and their Shadow Fiend handled by s4 this time, also had a good laning phase.
But the overall early to mid game stage was dominated by EHOME who set up an extremely aggressive tempo once the first night came. Lanm’s Night Stalker was continuously roaming ensuring a lot of kills on Secret cores for Cty’s Templar Assassin and Zy’s Gyrocopter.
With Arteezy way behind in farm, Secret tried to avoid teamfights as much as possible but at the 27th minute mark Cty got a solo Roshan kill and EHOME started to pressure Secret’s high ground. Only thirty minutes into the game, the first set of racks went down and EHOME kept the grip on the map forcing Arteezy to cut down the split push.
After they won a crucial team fight in which four Secret heroes died, including the Anti – Mage, EHOME went for the GG push that sealed the 2-0 victory and the top six spot secured.
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