iG and TongFu kick off the second group

Game 1


TongFu capitalized early on the mistakes made by MUFC's supports, such as clumsy movements and positioning, causing TongFu to score a few kills. The game went stalemate, everyone farmed and nobody ganked or pushed. When there finally was a fight Net's Rubick stole Reverse Polarity right after the initial usage, keeping Mufc in the fight and scoring some kills. Although MUFC still lost their gem in that fight (Shadow Fiend has Shadow Blade). Sharky decides to get picked off alone just outside TongFu's base, allowing TongFu to take down their second Roshan. Sloppy positioning by MUFC allows TongFu so initate a sneak attack just outside the borders of Radiants Base, resulting 3 kills and 1 set of rax. Mu's adds a Hex to his BKB and Shadow Blade, really allowing him to take quick solo kills on heroes like Tinker. The big items of Hao(Pipe, Assault, Radiance) allows TongFu to just walk inside the base and destroy bot rax.

Smart laning by TongFu nullified MUFC, the Bear by Hao kept Ohy's Tinker at bay mid and Mu was building towards his Godzilla-mode at top lane on the safe lane, Weaver couldn't quite compete with the quick damage potential by the Dire.

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Game 2


Quite surprisingly, MUFC sent Shadow Demon as solo mid instead of as a support to counter the solo Dark Seer. During the early game, there were a few trades and rotations for both teams, but mainly the Tiny of xFreedom were falling behind Hao's Lifestealer in farm and items. After a smoke gank from MUFC going awry, the kill score is tied 7-7 at minute 17. An extended fight at the bot lane started out well for MUFC but TongFu turned it around. Sand King went to try farm his dagger up, but meanwhile Tiny got ganked by an Infested Nyx and MUFC forfeited the melee rack mid. The nail in the coffin was a clash shortly to follow where TongFu initiated on both Magnus and Tiny at the same time, forcing MUFC to sacrifice one of those two but in the end both got picked up and TongFu couldn't defend their base.

Hao farmed rather uncontested the entire game while Tiny had problems farming against the Ion Shelled creeps. In the midlane there was a battle of map controllers (Beastmaster vs Shadow Demon) and Beastmaster had the bigger impact this game. MUFC lost way too many heroes this game to long range Illuminates when they were hanging around on low hp. The Sand King by Net didn't came into play either, he didn't get his dagger until it was too late. Overall, good lane and map control by TongFu, they played really confident and solid.

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Some setting changes for the hotkeys caused Vici's Lone Druid to skill Rabid instead of the Spirit Bear on level one. iG claimed the firstblood mid and Vici rotated their support to the top lane. YYF started jungling and got his dagger at 10 minutes, Brewmaster at 12 minutes and after both of those daggers were up, they started diving Vici, during which Lone Druid kept farming though. iG opted to smokegank and rotate a lot and kept catching single heroes off-guard with the blink + lasso. Vici managed to get a 5-2 fight outside their base, but it was a momentary victory for them (or failure for iG). The next attempt to push into Vici's base settled the game, 5-0 for iG + raxes.

Vici kept getting baited into smoke ganks, kept being out of position, something which YYF constantly took advantage of with his long range initiation. Vici also used the wrong heroes for defending, and couldn't split push. Basically, it was a game where competitive experience decided the outcome.

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Game 2



iG made some sloppy plays on their trilane aswell as midlane, letting Vici get some early kills. Cty's Luna managed to outfarm Zhou's Lone Druid, even though Zhou had a completely empty lane. Bounty then took over the top lane and Zhou moved into the jungle instead, with Faith staying to defend bot. This game was rather reversed, this time it was Vici getting early daggers on their Bat and their mid-laner (TA) while iG tried to farm the bear. Vici won the skirmishes, Luna got kills, Ferrari got picked off quickly with Xtt's Bat controlling all the fights. iG baited out a fight when an Eclipse was on cooldown, won it and took down Roshan. A failed attempt on Lone Druids life regained a lot of momentum for iG as they killed many tracked heroes in that fight and went on to take three towers, one of them tier 3. iG went on to win the next battle for Roshan thanks to a great use of buybacks. Lone Druid was at this point really fed, Vici couldn't stop iG from taking down 2 sets of raxes. BUT THEN, Zhou for some reason bought Rapier for his bear and instantly lost it to Luna. Did IG want to make the game interesting? Nevertheless, they got it back at the next Rosh fight when Bat jumped in too far ahead of his team and Luna was too far back. Vici called "GG" after losing the fight.

The strategy was reversed this time around, and Vici played it well, won the laning phase, advanced into the early and quick pickoffs on key heroes such as Ferrari's Queen of Pain. The fights went their way and Luna got farmed. But they got too eager and showed us how much experience plays in, iG had the better timing and positioning (and the use of buybacks) in the later fights of the games and managed to get back into the game and then Zhou just got out of hand.

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