Virtus Pro eliminated Team Secret in the lower bracket first series of the European qualifiers for the Boston Major.
Team Secret were sent to the lower bracket by Ad Finem and after losing to the Greek squad 0-2, meaning Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov found himself for the first in this career on the outside of a Valve event. Secret had a very good run through the group stage, losing only two of their games and, ironically, one of them was to Virtus Pro. Once they got to the playoffs, Secret looked completely different, losing their first series on the back of their own mistakes and getting dominated by an unstoppable Dmitris 'ThuG' Plivouris Outworld Devourer in game two.
The same happened with the group stage top seed team, Virtus Pro who began their playoffs run with a painful defeat from Team Liquid, the team they chose to play against. However, VP found their stride in the first elimination series and managed to keep Secret under control to save themselves from elimination.
Game One
Starting the first game of the series against Secret extremely aggressive, VP took down all the tier one towers around the 10 minute mark and forced the first high ground push a minute later with a level seven Chen and a level nine Dragon Knight. But despite being seriously behind, Secret successfully defended the tier three tower and in doing so they managed to force VP to slow down the pace of the game. It was only at the 21 minute mark when Secret became aggressive and started to slowly change the balance in their favor with the first triple kill under their name and a Roshan kill. From there on the game went back and forth, both teams trading kills in their attempt to establish the map control.
However, the Russians remained calm, found a couple of better initiations with their Batrider infest bomb and were finally able to siege the Secret base with an Aegis on their side after 50 minutes of play. Taking two lanes of barracks in one push, VP went straight for the throne and forced the GG call.
Game Two
For the second game, Secret went with an aura stack strategy and a lot of minus armor provided by both Vengeful Spirit and TA’s Desolator. But in their thirst for blood, the Asian-European mix ignored the OD and Disruptor power and lost several team fights due to not having BkBs in their inventories. It was close to the thirty minute mark when Zheng 'MidOne' Yeik Nai bought his and somehow seemed to be already too late. Getting team wiped a few times and unable to take a single barrack in three consecutive attempts, Secret built for the very late game scenario and kept themselves alive with two Divine Rapiers. With the clock passing one hour, the game became extremely intense, as VP started to melt down to MidOne’s right clicks and Ilya 'Lil' Ilyuk, on a six slotted Mirana, became over confident and paid with his life being caught way too advanced a few times too many.
The decisive fight happened 72 minutes into the game when Secret went for the mid lane barracks of VP and lost both Rapiers. With one Rapier on the Lifestealer and one on Mirana, VP counter-attacked Secret’s base and eliminated them from the Boston Major qualifiers.
The last day of the European qualifiers will commence on October 30 at 14:00 CEST with the upper bracket finals, Team Liquid vs Ad Finem. The winner of this will secure their tickets for the Boston Major while the loser will have to fight Virtus Pro for the last available spot into the LAN event.
