Probably one of the most anticipated series of StarLadder i-League group stage, Wings Gaming vs Digital Chaos did not disappoint.
After a long trail of underwhelming performances, Wings came to StarSeries to surprise everyone once again with their innovations. They started the BO3 series with something that might just become a Wings trade mark, a support Nature’s Prophet for Li 'iceice' Peng who was absolutely amazing to watch and made an incredible comeback in game two to secure the winner’s finals of group B.
Game One:
Seems like Wings paid a lot of attention to the new patch changes as they opened the game one draft with Brewmaster and Invoker, a combo meant to melt down buildings due to the increased Demolish? damage bonus of the Earth Panda from 150% to 300%. However, the unpredictable Wings factor was in their support, Furion, who proved to be beyond effective. Digital Chaos had prepared the old pushing strategy Luna-Shadow Demon with a core Mirana as well, a tactic that enabled them to put some fight against Wings, but it was not enough to stop the Chinese squad. Wings were extremely dominant from the start with their Furion teleporting all over the map to secure kills, including the first blood. Without a doubt, the MVP of the match, iceice rushed a Mekansm - Blade Mail build which caused DC a lot of troubles as they were not able to take the team fights that Wings were constantly forcing.
iceice’s selfless plays, by throwing himself in the middle of DC, just to provide vision and create chaos, secured a huge lead for Wings. With the Chinese far ahead and the NA squad looking for a miraculous play that would catch the Champions on the wrong foot, the game took an interesting twist, with both teams playing around the Roshan timer. The second Aegis of the game got snatched from Wings’ hands by Aliwi 'w33' Omar, but definitely the highlight would go once again to iceice who provided a crucial Aegis deny at the 43 minutes mark.
It’s been a while since Wings put up such a dominant performance and such an amazing game, which is why we highly recommend you watch the full game replay if you missed it.
Game Two:
After a pure Wings draft in game one, the Chinese went in game two with a standard lineup which emphasized both early pushing power but also the late game split push with Ember Spirit and Terrorblade. Having the KotL-Pudge support duo , Wings’ draft was supposed to put them in the lead from the laning stage. But, unfortunately for them, iceice missed almost all of his early hooks, totally losing the window where he could shine. The first blood was drawn only eight minutes after the starting horn, DC being the ones to claim it during a tier one defense in the bottom lane.
It was David 'MoonMeander' Tan’s turn to make the big plays on his Slardar, as he had an uncontested farm in the lane and secured a very fast blink Dagger, which translated in perfect 2-3 man Slithereen Crush initiations and easy pickoffs with either w33’s Shadow Fiend or Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok’s Slark. As the game transitioned to the middle stage, DC were taking down towers, uncontested Roshan kills, and before the 30 minute mark they were already pushing for the high ground. Although seriously underfarmed, Wings managed to hold on to their bottom lane barracks, where DC kept pushing and even secured a few pickoffs on the Shadow Fiend, DC’s most important hero.
After repelling DC off their base the second time, Wings smoked as five to prevent yet another Rohsan kill and picked off Shadow Fiend again, along with Vengeful Spirit, moment which marked their comeback. The next two Roshan kills went to their favor and the Terrorblade became too big to be stopped. Chu 'shadow' Zeyu used more than once the Sunder on his supports to save them from the Slardar or Slark initiations and slowly DC’s line up faded away completely.
