image source: Team Empire twitter
Second day in Yinchuan, China at WCA came with unexpected results and good news for the home fans of Wings Gaming who topped their group after a 2-0 victory versus Team Secret, to advance into the playoffs stage.
Second day at WCA started with group A, which was the strongest one given the fact that it contained big names like Secret, Empire and Fnatic. What no one saw coming was the Chinese wrath of Wings Gaming, a six place ranked team in China and 17th world-wide.
In their two game series debut versus Wings, Team Secret looked strong for the first ten minutes, with a very robust aggressive trilane (Ancient Apparition, Shadow Shaman and Ember Spirit). They were leading and managed to shut down Chu "Shadow" Zeyu’ Gyrocopter.
All the easy farming suddenly ended for Secret once Wings Gaming decided to five man rather early in the game with a Keeper of the Light, Li "iceice" Peng who prioritized Mana Leak, a very good counter to the mobile draft that Secret had.
After losing first game to Wings Gaming, Secret had to deal in game two with the same KoTL - Tiny combo on top of a very well played Rubick by Zyp and so Secret were suddenly in great danger of not making it out of the group.
The 2-0 win versus Fnatic was not enough for the team that came in China as main favorites. Their next matchup versus Empire was a disaster for them and with a second 0-2 loss, Secret finished the day at the bottom of the group, with Fnatic.
Another surprise was the premature exit of Invictus Gaming when they failed to grab one of the top two spots in group C. Losing Xu "BurNing" Zhilei after TI 5 and now Hock "Chuan" Chuan seems to have shattered IG completely.
The two teams advancing to playoffs from group C are CDEC Gaming and TnC, both with one win, two draws and zero losses.
Group B is still going with a decisive confrontation between LGD and Team YP. Because Newbee decided at the last moment to forfeit all their games and not to travel to Yinchuan, Leviathan are the leaders of the group, with six points which means they made it to the playoffs stage.
