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Dota 27 years agoAndreea "divushka" Esanu

OG claim their fourth Major title in Kiev and achieve legend status

OG keep breaking records. They were the only team in the Dota 2 history to have won three Valve events, now the bar has been raised to four Major Championship titles. A record that is hard to imagine will be matched by another team anytime soon.

Virtus Pro had a terrific run throughout the entire Kiev Major. An almost perfect group stage run rewarded them with the main event top seed and once they started playing on the big stage they kept rolling forward. With the crowd behind them at every match, Virtus Pro slayed three Chinese teams --iG V, VG J and iG--to face OG in the best-of-five Grand Finals. OG, on the other hand, finished fifth in the group stages and went through all regions representatives at the Kiev Major. They took down Team Random in the first round of the main event then they ended the SEA hope by eliminating Team Faceless and today warmed themselves up with Evil Geniuses, before the grand finals.

Everyone was expecting a tense grand final and VP and OG delivered.They fought neck and neck up until the very last fifth game of the series. On a side note, the Kiev Major is only the second Valve event where all five games were played in the grand finals, the other one was The International 3.  

Game One

In the opening game both teams went with comfort picks and clear strategies. OG were allowed to have the Terrorblade along with Gustav 's4' Magnusson’s Batrider and Tal 'Fly' Aizik’s Phoenix while VP went with a mid-lane Ursa for Vladimir 'No[o]ne' Minenko and Slark for Roman 'RAMZES666' Kushnarev, a duo of cores they ran before in Kiev and proved to be extremely effective. Despite losing the laning stage, VP recovered very well, playing around the Roshan advantage.

It was only at the 22 minute mark when they were able to claim the first Aegis of the game courtesy of a valuable pick off on Johan 'N0tail' Sundstein who didn’t have buyback at that time. From there on, VP looked like they had game one in the bag, always coming on top in the teamfights, which allowed them to take down OG’s towers with ease. However, a missed Reverse Polarity 40 minutes into the game, the first big misplay from Pavel '9pasha' Khvastunov, enabled OG to take down four VP heroes and to mount a huge comeback. The next Roshan went in OG’s favor as well and the triple major champions carried the momentum forcing the high ground push. They lurked just outside VP base long enough to catch one hero out of position, and once they secured the kill on the support Tusk they marched for the GG push taking the lead.

Game Two

Not wanting to deal with the Terrorblade push again, VP  secured the hero from themselves in the second game and made sure OG were left with not many illusion based heroes. OG established the laning stage dominance with an aggro trilane –Batrider, Moneky King, Phoenix, a trilane that was rather successful. They drew the first blood before the first minute mark and felt confident to start roaming with the MK to make sure Ursa is not getting any lead in the mid-lane. At the 17 minute mark VP tried to take the first Aegis but were contested by OG, Ursa was the target called for the kill and the Roshan attempt was stopped. A few minutes later, VP wiped out four OG heroes and finally secured the first Aegis, which also meant the go time for the high ground assault. OG lost the bottom lane of barracks, and were cornered into their base as VP kept the pressure on. Cautiously however, the CIS squad decided to wait for the next Roshan spawn before making the final siege. Around the 30 minutes mark they placed the Aegis on the Terrorblade and a lucky double damage rune swept OG’s heroes in split seconds.

Game Three

With the third game of the series OG decided it’s time to ban Ursa and picked Magnus for themselves, but went with a heavy magical damage line-up, while VP drafted four beefy melee cores with a  surprise last pick support Night Stalker.

Only four minutes into the game VP was already sitting on a 4k gold lead and with the first night time they started to simply crush OG. Ilya 'Lil' Ilyuk’ s rotations created havoc in all the lanes, allowing VP to simply stomp OG with an overall kill score of 32 to 12 in their favor.

Game Four

With their back against the wall, OG summoned the Jesse 'JerAx' Vainikka’s Earth Spirit and also secured N0tail’s Terrorblade. Recognizing the team fight potential of OG, VP tried to salvage the draft with a last pick core Silencer, but unfortunately the hero alone couldn’t make the difference for them. OG had a much better laning phase and only 17 minutes into the game they were confident to go for a Roshan kill. With the Aegis placed on Terrorblade they took the first tier three tower and melee barracks in the top lane, deleted the VP shrines from the map and took full control of the game. Always pushing with the Aegis advantage on their side, OG forced the series into a decisive game five.  

Game Five

The fifth and last game of the night was by far the most exciting one of the series, starting with the draft and going through the all game stages. The first two bans from VP were reserved for Naga and Terrorblade, while OG with the first pick took Treant Protector. Interestingly enough, with the second pick they gave a good signal of a defensive play style, choosing to reveal their second support, which was Dazzle to counter VP’s Legion Commander. From there on, both teams went with reactive choices, VP picking up Enchantress, OG responded with Troll Warlord to close the draft with Timbersaw.

Despite playing against good defensive heroes, VP opted for early aggression and built a fighting Alchemist instead of going for the usual Radiance/Manta/Octarine build. By the 20 minute mark, the kill score was 10 to 2 in VP’s favor, OG had only the mid-lane tier one tower still standing and everything looked grim for them. They desperately tried to contest VP’s Roshan attempts but ended up losing more than three heroes all the times, they tried to surprise the Russians with four or five man smokes but never found a good opening, and everything seemed lost fro them. The only thing working for OG was the high ground defense, which kept them alive up to 40 minutes into the game. In the aftermath of one of these high ground defenses OG managed to catch VP off guard on the retreat path. Ramzess’s Alchemist was killed first, followed by multiple lucky bashes from Troll Warlord that secured three more kills and a miraculous comeback for OG. With Butterfly and Skadi completed 40 minutes into the game by the Troll, OG slowly recovered, and started to grind their way back into the game. OG’s progress was a slow process and painful to watch too for the CIS fans. The triple Major champions took  VP’s base down bit by bit, but just before the 60 minute mark they secured mega creeps and took home their fourth Major trophy.

All that OG misses now is the International title. They have the Frankfurt and Boston Eagle Song trophies in their show case, they have the Manila Major Reaver, and now the collection is complete with the Mystic Staff secured as well. The Aegis of the Immortals is the next target for OG, and we are looking at a summer full of tournaments in preparation for the biggest event of the year!

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Andreea "divushka" EsanuI can resist anything but temptations... Follow me @DivDota

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