First semifinals of the last day in New Orleans puts face to face two notorious Meepo players as Team Secret had to play versus (monkey) Business. As expected, the mind games over the Poof Over Lord were real.
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Game One
For the first game of the best-of-three series (monkey) Business was feeling confident enough to bait a Meepo pick out from Secret. Last pick from Secret was the w33 signature hero and (monkey) seemed to know exactly how to deal with it as they instantly chose Sven for N0tail in mid lane.
But “the secret” plan of Puppey was shown in the laning phase where he sent an aggressive trio to stop Miracle-‘s Anti Mage farm while Misery was sent to solo farm safe lane on his Night Stalker. The plan went smooth for Secret and only four minutes into the game Misery already had his Phase Boots and so the first night gank could start.
Once Misery left the lane Envy was rotated to safe lane so he can start farming as well and both teams preferred to play extremely defensively for the next ten minutes. But once Envy finished his Travel Boots the ultra-mobile Secret started to hunt Anti Mage all over the map and Miracle- fell really behind, becoming more of a liability for his team.
With no space to farm his Manta Style, Anti-Mage was just a glass canon for Secret and the Sven pick ended up to be futile against w33’s Meepo. Secret took the game one in 35 minutes.
Game Two
Not sure if they wanted to fight against Meepo again, (monkey) Business decided to deny the hero with their last ban. Even so, Secret tried to outdraft Fly with a Night Stalker for w33.
The early game went evenly for both teams, Secret having a slight gold advantage but everything went in MB’s way at the 17 minute mark when Secret got caught in their own jungle, losing three heroes in a clumsy teamfight.
One minute later (monkey) also secured a Roshan kill for themselves and the momentum started to build up for them. From there on they became extremely aggressive, dominating Secret throughout the entire game. Despite great efforts from Misery to split push and force N0tail’s team to defend the tier three towers, MB managed to push the series into a decisive game three.
Game Three
Fighting for their own survival in the MLG World Finals, (monkey) Business banned Meepo from the first round and tried to confuse the master drafter Puppey with a Slardar third pick that proved to be a support hero for Crit-, while BigDaddy-N0tail received a safe lane farming Necrophos and Miracle got to play Queen of Pain.
It was a line-up that was supposed to work super well in the laning phase and to snowball through the mid game but Secret had a late game plan with two strong carries namely Shadow Fiend (w33) and Wrath King (EternalEnvy).
Both heroes are well-known for being strong laners as well and MB had problems to accomplish their plan. On top of that, Misery on Clockwerk had one of his best performances at this MLG so far, with incredible Hookshots that found (Monkey) Business’s heroes in the most unusual map corners, even QoP having huge problems to escape once Misery spotted her.
Being constantly pushed and hunted all over the map MB lost their battle and with that Team Secret are the first to advance in the Grand Finals.
title image from Team Secret facebook page
