The TI4 and TI5 Champions, Newbee and Evil Geniuses clashed in the second day of TI6 main event in an epic upper bracket battle.
Game One
With their first game at The International 6 main event, Evil Geniuses brought back to the KeyArena stage the Syed Sumail 'SumaiL' Hassan Storm Spirit and secured an overall classic EG draft to fight against Newbee who drafted a lineup that was suppose to shine early - mid stage with strong heroes suited for aggression and pickoffs.
Nonetheless, the first to take the initiative were EG who made the first rotation into the mid lane to gank Zhang 'Mu' Pan’s Dragon Knight but failed terribly as Newbee instantly reacted and brought everyone in to protect their mid laner, taking two kills from EG as well. After that, everyone resumed farming for the next couple of minutes, until Newbee felt confident to assault the mid lane. At the 14 minute mark, they gathered under their tier one tower and pushed EG’s lane as five. They scored four kills but couldn’t take down the tower. As soon as the boys in blue respawned, they smoked as four and surprised Newbee with an initiation of their own mid lane. It was their turn to score four kills and took down the tier one tower which resulted in blink daggers for both Sven and Batrider, and a completed Blood Stone for Storm Spirit. From there on EG exploded, constantly running at Newbee and making perfect use of their initiation potential. They caught Newbee several times and wiped them out to take game one at the 30 minute mark.
Game Two
For the second game Newbee went with more of a late game oriented draft and EG, notorious for their reactive drafts matched the Chinese team’s intentions with a mid lane Timbersaw and a last pick Morphling.
Unlike the previous game, this one started at a much faster pace, both teams trying to shut down their adversaries’ cores. Saahil 'UNiVeRsE' Arora and Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg went full aggressive on Chen 'Hao' Zhihao’s Lifestealer from the very beginning and scored the first blood on him, giving a fair advantage to Universe’s Faceless Void who a few minutes later was able to even achieve a solo kill on the same Lifestealer.
In the mid lane, Timbersaw had a very good start as well. With Zai’s rotations and continuous aggression, Newbee really struggled during the laning stage. Despite EG doing extremely well in two lanes, Fear’s Morphling got killed a few times by the Skywrath Mage-Sand King duo and slowly but surely fell behind in farm compared to Newbee’s Alchemist and Lifestealer. That translated into a bad mid game transition for EG who were not able to five man once Newbee started the mid lane push. EG had to fully rely on Suma1L’s power to outplay his opponents. Unfortunately for the boys in blue, his mind blowing Timbersaw plays were not enough to shut down Newbee. The TI4 Champions took every fight on the back of incredibly well landed Burrow Strikes and ultimates from Damien 'kpii' Chok, who can easily be regarded as the MVP of the game.
Twenty minutes into the game Morphling was still farming his Ethereal Blade while Mu’s Alchemist was close to six slotted. The only thing keeping him from getting his inventory packed was a courier snipe with an Octarine Core on it. This actually bought enough time for Morphling to finally get his E-Blade finished and with that EG were the first to accomplish a full team wipe on Newbee followed by a second one only two minutes later. From that point on, the game erupted in continuous team fights where kills were evenly traded most of the time, making it extremely hard to point at a clear winner. For Newbee, it was kpii who made the difference, salvaging each fight with his incredible Epicenters. For EG, it was the team coordination that enabled them to stand their ground in every engagement. The two TI former Champions fought continuously for over 50 minutes, EG always looking for the right moment to siege the high ground while Newbee always had the resources to stop them before they would actually get close to the tier three towers. Finally, at the 65 minutes mark, Newbee ran out of buybacks and EG was able to chip down tier three towers which enabled an easier gg push five minutes later.
The 2-0 victory versus Newbee secures a top six finish this year for the TI5 Champions. Tomorrow’s last series for top four placement will pit EG against yet another Chinese team, EHOME while Newbee will have to face Team Liquid in the lower bracket.
The International 6 Coverage HUB
Click here for results, VODs and all the other information
