Day two of the EPICENTER playoffs ended close to midnight in Moscow, Russia with the elimination series between TI3 and TI4 Champions Alliance and Newbee.
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Game One:
What started with a common draft from Alliance with Io, Nature's Prophet, and Slark ended up with something we don’t see played every day by Gustav 's4' Magnusson-- an Ember Spirit to complete a full mobility hero lineup. Newbee’s response came with a last pick Alchemist for Zhang 'Mu' Pan that turned out to be the trump card for the Chinese team.
Although the laning stage wasn't in Newbee’s favor at all, with their first kill coming only at the 11 minute mark, Alchemist had all the space to do what he does best, and by the 28 minute mark he was already six slotted. With an Aegis placed on Sven, Newbee grouped as five and took the first lane of barracks without any problem as Alliance was really lacking the means to stop them.
Their first damage item, Daedalus for Ember Spirit, was completed just before Newbee came for the second high ground push, and helped them to preemptively smoke and take the Chinese by surprise near the radiant secret shop. Four Newbee heroes hit the ground and the push was suddenly shut down. Two minutes later, a hectic team fight held at the top rune reestablished Newbee’s map control.
As the game transitioned into the late stage, everything came down to who would get the better initiation, which was quite a challenge for Newbee, given the two Linken's Spheres on Alliance’s Slark and Ember Spirit. Newbee played the patience game, waiting for the Alchemist to finish Aghanim’s Scepters for the entire team.
In the meantime, s4 found the farm for a Divine Rapier which made Newbee’s pushing efforts even more difficult, but at the 58 minute mark Damien 'kphoenii' Chok final found the two man Flaming Lasso on Io and Slark. Without a buyback available on Jonathan 'Loda' Berg, Alliance had to watch their Ancient fall apart.
Game Two:
For the second game of the series Newbee decided to not allow Jerry 'EGM' Lundkvist play his signature Io by first picking it for themselves, but that made room for another old friend of EGM to come out-- Rubick. Although Newbee already drafted a mid Viper Alliance took advantage of the dire side and chose to go with an Ursa last pick for Loda, making perfect use of it by controlling every Roshan spawn.
The laning stage went from bad to worse for Newbee who displayed a huge lack of coordination between their Io and Viper that put them behind as Alliance forced the issue extremely early and pushed the Chinese into early fights.
Unfortunately, with Viper outfarmed by both of the Alliance supports, Newbee couldn’t take any reasonable team fight and waited for the Swedes to come for the base. At the 26 minute mark, Alliance took down the first lane of barracks but lost four heroes on the retreat path, allowing Newbee to close the gold gap. A few minutes later a fresh BkB on Sven wiped out Alliance and raised Newbee’s hope for a full comeback. A well-timed smoke in the bottom lane put Alliance back in control and Newbee found themselves cornered again in the base where they had to admit defeat after being wiped twice.
Game Three:
The drafting stage for the last game of the series featured Chen 'Hao' Zhihao’s Signature Gyrocopter fighting Loda’s Sven. The same laning to mid game story repeated, with Alliance playing extremely aggressively, pushing down the first tier one tower only seven minutes into the game with s4’s Death Prophet Exorcism.
At the same time, Alliance made everything possible to prevent the much needed farming game for Newbee’s cores and delayed both Tidehunter’s and Dragon Knight’s item progression with blocked jungle camps and good vision on their opponents' map side.
But Newbee showed once more how well they can play from behind and patiently waited to take advantage of every small mistake. At the 25 minute mark Alliance was with their heroes in the Roshan pit waiting for the beast to respawn and despite scanning a five man smoke from the Chinese they thought they had time to kill it but instead were Ravaged by kphoenii’s Tidehunter, losing the fight and the Aegis. Gyrocopter left the pit with a mega kill streak and a completed an Eye of Skadi which became Sven’s main problem as he would suffer from kiting in all the following team fights.
That single Roshan fight brought Newbee back in the game and within the next ten minutes the absurdly underfarmed Tidehunter sat on a Refresher Orb and next to his Dragon Knight teammate he was able to be Newbee’s frontliner.
After losing the mid lane of barracks, at the 35 minute minute mark Alliance made a last try for a Roshan kill but were spotted. Sven died again and with the last Aegis placed on Gyrocopter Newbee eliminated the Swedes from EPICENTER.
Their next adversaries in the lower bracket will be decided with the first series of day three of the playoffs, where Evil Geniuses will face compLexity Gaming.
title and headline image courtesy of EPICENTER
