bzm solo handles beastcoast to keep OG alive at Arlington Major

beastcoast’s Major run came to an end with another top six placement.

PGL Arlington Major is turning into a true Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov show. OG’s mid laner, who a couple of months back became the youngest player to have won a Major at ESL One Stockholm, is now popping off hard on the Arlington stage, to give OG the chance to defend the title.

OG are fighting in Arlington through lower bracket rounds, much like they did in Stockholm, and are once again joined by the two-time TI champion, Sébastien "Ceb" Debs. But, although Ceb is still one of the key factors in OG’s victories, he is often outshined by the mid lane youngster.

 

OGvsbeastcoast

bzm stole the show in the lower bracket quarter-finals right from the first game of the series. He’s been reserved the overall last pick of the draft and went for his signature Invoker. beastcoast had a straight forward game plan in mind with a Bloodseeker-Batrider combo and an overall very mobile draft that should have allowed them to showcase their hyper aggressive play style. However, it all got countered with an Oracle pick from OG and clutch plays from Tommy "Taiga" Le.

beastcoast seemed to have the laning stage under control, but that vanished fast after just a  couple of minutes, as bzm made his first rotation just 4 minutes in and from there on, he was active all over the map to bring a very convincing first game win for OG.

Nonetheless, coming into the second game, beastcoast, took a few of OG’s heroes that dominated the first game and were able to even the score with an Ursa draft that had control over the Roshan pit the entire game.

OG changed the pace in game three by bringing Arc Warden for the first time on the Arlington Major stage. Their game plan seemed to have four players forcing skirmishes and creating chaos on the map while leaving Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev to farm and get solo experience as much as possible. 

The key factor in all madness was bzm on Ember Spirit, although he had an awful start of the laning stage, but he fully recovered by drawing first blood on Jean "Chris Luck" Salazar’s Templar Assassin. From there on, much like in game one, bzm went on a hunt mission and was an absolute pain for beastcoast.

By far the series’ MVP, bzm was involved in 47 of the 58 kills landed by OG in game three and finished the game with 27/0/23 K/D/A.

While for beastcoast the Major comes to a close in the lower bracket quarterfinals, OG will return to the Arlington Esports Stadium stage for the last series of the day, where they will play against Team Aster for a spot in the lower bracket finals.

^{headline picture courtesy of Gamers8 Esports}