picture courtesy of StarLadder
The International 2017 runners-up, Newbee exit the StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 without a single win.
After two consecutive 2-0 losses, yesterday against compLexity Gaming and today against Team Secret, Newbee start the new season without securing any qualifier points from the first minor
they’ve been invited for.
Game One:
Out-drafted, out-maneuvered and out-played, Newbee got run over in less than 25 minutes by a powerful pushing strategy of Team Secret. Newbee’s core Venomancer despite having a fairly good laning stage became pretty useless against Secret’s support Nyx Assassin who had him controlled in the team fights with the Spiked Carapace. Neither Xu 'Moogy' Han couldn’t do much for his team on Lifestealer. Isolated by Adrian 'Fata' Trinks’s Furion - Sprout or controlled by Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov’s Bane, Moogy didn’t have a good infest - initiate option either.
Newbee’s game seemed to rely on a fast Blink Dagger for Damien 'kpii' Chok’s Tidehunter who theoretically could have initiated with Naix infested and followed by an Ancient Apparition ultimate, they could have created enough damage for Venomancer to clean the enemies in one Poison Nova. However, none of these things happened as Team Secret snow-balled out of the laning stage and just around the 25 minute mark they forced out the GG call after taking a second tier three tower from the TI7 runners-up.
Game Two:
Team Secret finished the game two drafting stage with three signature heroes of theirs. Rubick for Yazied 'YapzOr' Jaradat, Ember Spirit for Yeik 'MidOne' Nai Zheng and a last pick Broodmother for Marcus 'Ace' Hoelgaard. Although the game didn’t go as bad as the first one for Newbee, to some extent they faced the same problems from the previous game. Song 'Sccc' Chun’s Ursa had to deal in the laning stage with Bane’s Enfeeble and later on with the Fiend's Grip. Moogy and Kpii had to watch out for Rubick steals, sometimes giving free spells to Yapzor.
Team Secret didn’t make any risky moves, they had the patience to play defensively when Sccc managed to sneak into the Roshan Pit and claim the Aegis and pressed the issue only when they had the vision and the numbers advantage. It took them only 30 minutes to take the victory and with it a second chance to advance into the SL i-League Invitational minor playoffs.
The last series of day three is set to be a Team Secret vs Na’Vi rematch. The winner of the confrontation will join CompLexity Gaming and Team Liquid into the playoffs, losers will have to pack and look forward at the PGL Open Bucharest which is the next minor in the Pro Circuit schedule.
