Image courtesy of cybersport

After falling to the lower bracket on day 1 of the playoffs of the Dreamleague Minor, OG and Team Empire have wrapped it up and are headed home early with a disappointing 5-6th finish and zero DPC points in hand.

Despite surviving the first round of the lower bracket on the second day of the tournament, OG and Team Empire have been eliminated by Newbee and Fnatic respectively who will head to the third round of the lower bracket and face off against each other tomorrow. Both the series followed the straight 2-0 result with short games that has been prevalent at this particular Minor tournament, where all but two of the series in the playoffs had the same result. This might, in fact, be the effect of the most recent patch that heavily impacted the comeback mechanics of the game, making buyback cost a lot more for core heroes and making it harder for the winning team to throw their advantage, resulting in games ending relatively early.

Newbee vs OG

Game 1

Newbee opened their draft with a first phase Dark Willow and Gyrocopter. The former was recently added to Captain's Mode and has shown above average results until now, and the latter has been the most contested and successful carry in the current meta by far. OG tried to cheese their way to victory with a last phase Oracle and Huskar pickup. However, Newbee did what is seemingly impossible, at least in public games, and beat the Oracle + Huskar combo by crushing their lane with Hong "Faith" Da Zeng's Dark Willow and Damien "kpii" Chok's Enchantress. Razor was drafted for their coach Sébastien "7ckngMad" Debs who was standing in for them, but despite a stellar record-breaking performance on the hero yesterday in their series against paiN Gaming, the team could not hold on to Newbee's methodical execution. After losing all lanes of barracks and facing Mega Creeps, the team awkwardly called GG in the midst of a Roshan attempt as they realized they were too far behind.

Game 2

Once again, Newbee confidently made the same first phase opening of Dark Willow and Gyrocopter. They also drafted Lina in their last pick for their midlaner Chun "Sccc" Song, a hero that has recently been resurrected from the dead by Daniel "Dendi" Ishutin. The pick proved useful as he absolutely dominated from start to finish, with impressive stats across the board to show for it. The game started quite evenly, with all three lanes strangely drawing out and neither team gaining a significant networth advantage up until the 30-minute mark. With Newbee behind in kills, they started making better calls, getting some key pickoffs until the 42-minute mark where all hell broke loose. In an extended team fight around the Roshan pit and Dire high ground that involved multiple buybacks from both teams, Newbee came out on top, owing to Sccc's great positioning that allowed him to stay alive in the fight for the longest time and for Xun "Moogy" Han's smart decision not to use his BKB before buying back on the Gyrocopter. Before long, OG realized they had gone all in and got little out of it, forcing them to call GG.

Fnatic vs Team Empire

Game 1

Empire started off the first game by going for an aggressive offlane with their Terrorblade and Shadow Shaman. Fnatic responded by sending Saahil "Universe" Arora's Omniknight to deal with it. Naturally, they went for an aggro lane themselves, completely shutting down Andrey "Batrider" Kadyk's Batrider with their Lone Druid played by Jacky "EternalEnvy" Mao and Sand King played by Djardel "DJ" Mampusti —who gave an absolutely stellar, MVP worthy performance in the game. They continued their steady and constant rise in networth advantage after the laning phase. In a display of absolute dominance, they continued by taking down two lanes of barracks and sealing the victory with a teamwipe on Empire without giving away a single kill.

Game 2

The second game followed suit in a similar fashion, where Fnatic repeated the Lone Druid pick for their captain and carry player Envy, and picked up the Shadow Shaman themselves. Their push heavy lineup materialized as they went for a rare offlane Nature's Prophet pick. They also repeated their Visage pick from game 1, however, this time for their star midlaner Abed "Abed" Yosup, who went on an absolute rampage without dying a single time in the match. Empire responded with a Tinker pickup for the recent addition to their lineup, midlaner Aleksandr "Nix" Levin. Unfortunately, the pick did not prove very effective against the Shaman's Serpent Wards who, along with the Lone Druid's Bear, melted the Radiant's barracks with low risk. It only proved deadlier as DJ managed to farm an Aghanim's Scepter and Refresher Orb before the 30-minute mark, by which time Empire's lineup only seemed even more helpless. Losing their Tinker and being forced to buyback on him towards the end, the CIS squad had no option but to call GG, as they watched their last lane of barracks go down without much of a fight.

Newbee and Fnatic, both of whom have secured a top 4 finish, will go up against each other in round 3 of the loser's bracket tomorrow scheduled at 13:30 CET. This will be followed by round 4 where the winners of round 3 will face the losers of the winner's finals for a spot in the Grand Finals of the tournament.

OG and Empire are eliminated from DreamLeague Season 9 Minor