The first weekend of Curse Invitational is played out with Natus Vincere and Team Liquid being the most successful. Out of the eight teams starting in the upper bracket, they are the only two not having dropped to the lower yet.
The first day featured three matches of upper bracket, round one. First off it was Natus Vincere showing the power of Skywrath Mage when taking down QPAD Red Pandas two to nothing. Dendi handled the hero mid and to a great effect, winning both the lane aswell as having a big impact in the games overall. Mousesports was successful with their recent pick-up of syndereN, beating the recent EMS One finalist RoX.KiS. The America clash between dignitas and Evil Geniuses went EG's way, they showed prominent play and their new player Bamboe fitting well into the ranks.
A team who still has to prove their roster change being for the greater good is Team Empire, who lost to Team Liquid. Once again a Skywrath Mage was used, this time by Korok and also with great success. Liquid continued their streak right afterwards versus mouz in the upper semi final. Mousesports put up a fight though, taking one game of the series and proved to be quite the obstacle for Liquid in the third game.
Liquid.Bulba clogging the cogs of mousesports
The second upper semi was between Natus Vincere, the titans of Dota and Evil Geniuses, who is on an upswing lately. In game one, Dendi once again displayed how overwhelming his Skywrath Mage is in the midlane, EG struggled throughout the game even though they put up a few good fights. The second game went better for the Americans, turning a few fights over and getting a series of kills. Na`Vi's Alchemist taking down four towers in a row as well as extensive warding certainly helped keeping them in the game though. Na`Vi farmed up their key items (i.e. key hexes) and won a very important fight where Demon was disabled and killed before he could use Reverse Polarity, which lead them to eventually winning the game.
Since Natus Vincere and Liquid have reached the upper final already, both teams are entitled to atleast third place aswell as $2,000 USD. The tournament continues next weekend with most of the lower bracket as well as the upper finals. All matches are casted by Ayesee and Merlini.
