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Dota 26 years agoAndreea "divushka" Esanu

Mineski advance into the StarLadder i-League Invitational minor playoffs


picture courtesy of StarLadder

It was a marvelous StarLadder i-League Invitational day 3 for Mineki who took two clean victories to secure themselves a place among the top four teams at the first minor of the season.

Mineski are one of the first three teams to secure TI8 qualifiers points. For that to happen, they swept 2:0 through Vici Gaming and SG e-sports in the Group A elimination and decider matches. Today’s achievement marks the end of two years without a month since Mineski was last time playing at a Valve sponsored event, Frankfurt Major, back in November 2015.

Since then, the organization went through countless roster shuffles in their endless effort to bring the team back on track. In March this year they brought Chai 'Mushi' Yee Fung from Fnatic and allowed him to test and experiment as much as he needed before finding a lineup that would finally get Mineski out from the shadows.

It was just in the recent post TI7 shuffle when Daryl Koh 'iceiceice' Pei Xiang and Anucha 'Jabz' Jirawong came from Team Faceless to join Mushi along with Kam 'NaNa' Boon Seng from WG Unity. The new additions changed the team dynamics for good as Mineski won the first four minors regional qualifiers.

First minor in line is StarLadder i-League Invitational Season 3 where Mineski found themselves seeded in group A alongside The International 7 Champions, Team Liquid. Under these circumstances topping the group seemed, and proved to be mission impossible for all the group A teams. But the second spot is good enough to advance in the event playoffs and secure the first TI8 qualifier points. Mineski did it in a convincing fashion today. After their 2:0 win over Vici Gaming, they came prepared for SG e-sports and beat the Brazilians at their own game.

SG e-sports had an interesting to say the least, game one draft. They decided on a fourth pick Arc Warden which came into already picked by Mineksi Winter Wyvern, Anti Mage, and Lich.

Mineski started with an aggro trilane Lich - Earth Spirit - Anti Mage and let Iceiceice solo safelane on Winter Wyvern against Guilherme Silva 'costabile' Costábile’s Arc Warden. The Brazilians lost both of their side lanes and despite Adriano de Paula '4dr' Machado‘s commendable efforts to keep his team in the game, SG e-sports had no answer to Mushi’s super farmed Anti Mage. Mushi went with a Linken’s - Aghanim’s Scepter build on the AM and was Mineski’s front liner in all the pushes. Impossible to be caught, controlled or bursted down, Mushi finished the game with a personal 11/0/6 KDA and pushed Mineski one game away from the playoffs in just 30 minutes.  

Game two unfolded with Mineski delivering once again a strong performance, this time around with a last pick Broodmother for Iceiceice and an unexpected carry Vengeful Spirit for Mushi.

They began with an aggro trilane once more to which SG e-sports decided to simply abandon the safe lane and send their Enigma straight to the jungle. But by doing so, they gave a lot of maneuvering space to Iceiceice who died for the first time at the eight minute mark when he was already far ahead in terms of farm. Mineski’s good engage-disengage mechanics with Venge, Clockwerk and Puck had them claim the second game victory in a convincing manner and eliminated SG e-sports from the first minor of the season.

Besides a larger portion of the prize money, StarLadder i-League playoffs are offering a total of 150 TI8 qualifier points. The four teams who advanced into the playoffs will play tomorrow in a single elimination bracket. The final day will kick off at 12 CEST with Mineski vs compLexity Gaming followed by the second semifinal at 15:00 CEST. The grand finals will be played at 18:00 CEST in a best-of-five format.

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

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