The first winners match at Manila Major’s group stage had two teams with great intel on each other facing for the third time in less than a month at a LAN event. OG and Newbee were the protagonists of Group’s A finals after a strong start in Manila, both with 2-0 victories against their first opponents, Empire and compLexity Gaming respectively.
OG and Newbee had already played each other twice in the current patch, with a recent clash nearly three weeks ago at EPICENTER where the Europeans interrupted the 29-0 winning streak accomplished by Newbee. But, in the lower bracket finals from the same EPICENTER, Newbee was able to take the revenge and relegated OG to a third place finish in the tournament.
In their first game against OG at the Manila Major, Newbee chose to let the Io get through the first banning phase and Tal 'Fly' Aizik immediately picked the hero for Andreas 'Cr1t' Nielsen, pairing it with a Lifestealer - Amer 'Miracle-' Barqawi for the huge Relocate - Infest bomb threat. However, the Chinese had their own ganking and counter ganking draft with a Clinkz and a Faceless Void.
Game One
The game started with mid dual lanes, Io - Viper against Dragon Knight - Lich which gave Newbee an advantage with a first point in Frost Aura. The other two lanes were also easily won by Newbee, Void having no issue farming against the dual Vege- Naix while Clinkz- Earth Spirit made Slardar’s life miserable in the offlane .
Six minutes into the game David 'MoonMeander' Tan was yet to get a first last hit on a creep and was sitting on four levels without brown boots. The easy laning stage for Newbee smoothly transitioned into a very aggressive stance in the mid game stage, with the Chinese being the ones who started the two-three man rotations around the map, took tower after tower and won most of the skirmishes in the process.
However, OG’s tankiness started to make the difference once Lifestealer completed his Armlet and Viper had the Mekansm on line. But Newbee recognized OG’s momentum and played defensively, with Chronospheres used to stop OG’s initiations. At the 18 minute mark a five man team fight erupted in front of Roshan’s Pit and OG lost four heroes on the back of good usage of the high ground vision advantage by Newbee. Two minutes later OG returned to Roshan and placed the Aegis on the Lifestealer. Despite that, Newbee kept the aggressive stance and were the first to siege tier three towers a couple of minutes later, unsuccessfully as the Void Chrono caught only an Infested Viper.
Despite their big lead in both gold and experience, Newbee slowed the tempo and waited to catch their adversaries on the wrong foot, which happened at the 30 minute mark when Chen 'Hao' Zihao was engaged by the entire OG team. He was able to escape with an immediate BKB trigger and lured OG into a trap between tier one and tier towers where they got five man wiped. One minute later OG respawned and marched as five to Roshan pit but this time they were challenged and wiped out once more which cost them the first game of the series.
Game Two
For the second game Newbee ignored Io once again, targeting Miracle and Fly with their bans, which allowed OG to secure the Tiny - Io combo while having Miracle on a mid Dragon Knight. The Chinese response was a last counter pick Razor on top of a quite reactive draft with Venge in response of OG’s Batrider and a jungle Beastmaster.
What theoretically should have been a better laning stage for OG turned out in Newbee’s favor as they again focused on shutting down Moon’s farm. Batrider’s Blink Dagger was delayed up to the 20 minute mark and despite getting a few kills on Damien 'kpii' Chok’s Dark Seer, Tiny was also not allowed to capitalize on his laning advantage.
The lack of initiations from OG lead to a one sided game for Newbee and eighteen minutes into the game they were already sieging OG’s base. The Europeans had no real response because the Batrider was not even leveling up his Flaming Lasso until he got his Blink. And so, Newbee are the first to secure an upper bracket main event at the Manila Major, after a flawless run through the group stage where they didn’t drop a single game.
OG will fight for their last chance at the much wanted upper bracket start in the main event against the winner of Team Empire vs compLexity Gaming.
