picture courtesy of Epicenter
Recently shuffled, LGD Forever Young are set to deliver the biggest surprise at Epicenter after they defeated both OG and Liquid in the group stage.
Less than a month ago LGD Forever Young qualified for Epicenter with Tue Soon 'Ah Fu' Chuan on trial status for the team. Arrived in Moscow, the Chinese, who made quite some changes in the recent shuffle by adding three new players to their squad - Ah Fu, He 'Inflame' Yongzheng and Leong 'ddc' Fat-meng - have already delivered two big upsets and most likely they have secured a playoffs spot.
Yesterday, in the opening series of the group stage, LFY crushed OG with an outstanding performance from Ah Fu on a support Night Stalker in game one. The match finished with a kill score of 33 to 6 in LFY’s favor and a personal K/D/A of 8-0-21 for Ah Fu. Game two lasted nearly one hour and was heavily contested, the kill score, 43-43 at the end of it, perfectly reflecting the fight for survival, as both teams were fighting against mega creeps.
Off to a very good start already, LFY continued to deliver on the second day as well, by taking down the Epicenter defending champions, Team Liquid. The LFY vs Liquid series was the opening act for day two in Group A and all three games were played. Liquid won the first match with a mid-lane Bloodseeker for Amer 'Miracle-' Al-Barkawi and a carry Faceless Void for Lasse 'MATUMBAMAN' Urpalainen. However, LFY bounced back in game two making use of the similar tanky cores strategy they used against OG in day one. Bristleback and Dragon Knight were summoned to deal with Liquid’s Terrorblade - Dark Seer pushing strategy in game two while game three was secured by the Chinese with a pushing draft of their own, built around Death Prophet.
With their two victories, LFY are now leading Group A with six points and only two series left to play. Team Liquid, however, who are the defending champions of Epicenter, are at the bottom of the group with two losses already and in real danger of not reaching the playoffs.
If group A surprised the Dota 2 fans with LFY’s outstanding performance so far, Group B has the home crowd favorites rolling on undefeated after two series. In the first day of the group stage Virtus Pro wiped the floor out with Clutch Gamers in a less than an hour 2-0 victory and they continued to have a great run on the second day as well. The first match versus Planet Odd was a one sided Troll Warlord affair that ended with a 23 to 6 kill score in VP’s favor, however, the Russians were facing a decisive game three after Planet Odd managed to make a nice and slow recovery in game two on the back of a beyond godlike Sven played by Roman 'Resolut1on' Fominok. But as things were going downhill for VP, Pavel '9pasha' Khvastunov landed a savage five man RP in a high ground defense and kept his team undefeated after the first two days in the group stage.
VP are currently leading the Group B with two victories and two series left to play, but Evil Geniuses are the real test yet to come for the hometown favorites.
EG has played only one series so far and they won it in style. The Manila Masters MVP, Syed Sumail 'SumaiL' Hassan, started the Epicenter journey with a spectacular mid-lane Earthshaker versus Invictus Gaming and took once again the spotlight, finishing game one against the Chinese with a personal K/D/A of 16-0-10. Both games against iG were extremely one sided, Evil Geniuses taking the victory in less than an hour with an overall kill score of 28-3 in game one and 25-7 in game two.
Evil Geniuses and Virtus Pro will not face each other until the very last series of day four, which makes all the group stage even more exciting to watch, as the winner of each group will advance straight into the playoffs semi-finals.
Unfortunately for the bottom two teams from each group, Epicenter will end in the group stage, and so far things are not looking good at all for Team Liquid in Group A and Clutch Gamers in Group B. The group stage matches will resume, tomorrow, June 6 at 11:00 CEST, the full schedule for the day being as follows:
11:00 CEST, LFY vs Natus Vincere
11:00 CEST, Planet Odd vs Evil Geniuses
14:30 CEST, OG vs Team Liquid
14:30 CEST, Virtus Pro vs Invictus gaming
18:00 CEST, Team Secret vs Natus Vincere
18:00 CEST, Clutch Gamers vs Planet Odd
