posted by Morantyx,
cn Invictus Gaming's journey towards ESL One New York has already come to an end. The defending champion could not deliver against cn LGD Gaming during the group stage, which lead to iG's elimination after an entertaining but awkward last game that ended within 15 minutes. Tomorrow, the semi finals of the Chinese qualifier will decide which two teams will engage in a Best-of-5 for the only Chinese ticket to ESL One New York.
ChuaN was clearly disappointed.


The reformed line-up of LGD proves to be an extremely difficult opponent for iG, as the latter struggles to defeat them in several tournaments. After being thrown out of The International 4 by the former squad of LGD, iG's chances to defeat them diminished even more after the big reshuffle in the Chinese scene, as they lost Faith to the revamped team of LGD. Not to mention that he's their new captain as well.

About two weeks ago, they prevented iG from reaching the LAN finals of a major tournament on Chinese soil, the World eSports Championship, when they met each other in the second round of the qualifiers. Now they caused iG to miss out on the grand spectacle of their last major tournament victory, rendering them unable to defend their title from ESL One Frankfurt.


LGD snowballed out of control



Beware of the Sigil
Ymir the Tusk is an amazing initiator that allows you to play extremely aggressive in the early game. With his powerful spells, he can disable foes across the map to set up kills for his team. Movement speed is an important measure for the king of snow, as he controls a Frozen Sigil in order to slow down his enemies.This morning, LGD utilised Tusk twice to crush cn TongFu in the Sina Cup. In the capable hands of MMY and with some help from a Skywrath Mage, who is often picked up these days, Tusk proved amazingly efficient as a support. The ability to engage with Snowball from such a long range and the possibility to catch people out with Ice Shards contributed heavily to the successful early aggression of LGD.

Just a few hours after watching this unusual strategy succeed against the young squad of TongFu, LGD displayed the snowball show once again in the Chinese qualifiers for ESL One New York. ChuaN and his teammates were slaughtered in brutal fashion by this entertaining hero, despite Skywrath Mage being banned out by iG in the first phase of the draft.

The deciding game of group 1 ended in less than 15 minutes as the players of iG got caught over and over again by LGD, who racked up twenty kills and only suffered one casualty as Viper got killed once. Shadow Shaman was picked up as a replacement for the Skywrath Mage, which showed great synergy as the clock ticked on. There was no appropriate answer from iG, who collected quite some pushing power with the likes of Razor, Jakiro and Visage, but they did not get the time to build a solid machine that could siege down the towers. While most Chinese teams are known for their slow start where they excel at farming up core items, LGD and many other teams are focusing on early skirmishes due to the current "meta", in which games tend to end before we reach lategame at all, often due to snowballing heroes like Tusk that can turn an early advantage into a quick win.


Chinese qualifier playoffs






Visit the joinDOTA coverage page for ESL One New York by clicking here.



This article was written by be Tom Laeremans, joinDOTA's Writer. Tom finally made his way to Dota last year after two years of "training" in LoL. In his spare time after college, he spends most of his time behind the computer outside his football addiction.Location: Testelt, BelgiumFollow him on @Morantyx.

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