posted by Supafida,
The first day of Starladder LAN Finals has come to an end. When the dust has settled, it was LGD and Liquid who came out on top, each winning 3 Bo1 games while losing none. The LAN Finals of Starladder Season 14 (jointly organised with i-League) has commenced. Teams have made their debut in the first LAN of 2016 and as day one came to an end, cn PSG.LGD and eu Team Liquid

took the leading position in their groups

, defeating all opponents who stood in their path and

finishing with a 3-0 score.





LGD: Earth Spirit and Morphling carried the day

cn PSG.LGD is on a roll after successfully qualifying for the Shanghai Major. They certainly brought their A game to Minsk,

winning all their matchups against us Evil Geniuses, ru Team Spirit and Int Fnatic

in the opening day.

It is certainly not difficult to identify the reason for LGD’s success. The support duo cn Zeng Rong 'MMY' Lei – mo Leong 'ddc' Fatmeng played a substantial role in securing an undefeated day one. In particular,

MMY’s Earth Spirit

proved to be a valuable asset, setting up kills and providing great utility as well as damage in combats. Accurate Rolling Boulders and Boulder Smashes helped securing the lanes for LGD’s cores at the early game as whenever MMY made a rotation, it would lead to a kill.

MMY secured first blood for LGD with the help from Darkseer


The other player who contributed to LGD’s 3-0 run yesterday is their star carry cn Liu 'Sylar' Jiajun, who has been playing phenomenally since the new patch. In particular, he seemed to have brought

Morphling

– a forgotten carry hero – back in style.

my Wai Pern 'Net' Lim died almost immediately to Morphling's lethal combo


Often opting for the

“shotgun” build

, with Power Treads, Linken’s Sphere and Ethereal Blade, Sylar was able to instantly blow up enemy heroes from a safe distance, giving LGD number in combats. Almost always topping the net worth chart as the game approaches thirty minutes, Sylar is definitely a formidable carry to watch in the next days of Starladder.

Liquid: Great teamfights and clutch saves brought them to the top

In the other group, eu Team Liquid is mirroring LGD’s stellar performance. Having beaten

us compLexity Gaming, ru Vega Squadron * and most notably eu Team Secret

, Liquid ended their day with also a 3-0 streak. However, slightly different from LGD, Liquid’s success can be attributed to the entire team as a whole, as they displayed

superb synergy and teamwork

, which was shown through superiorly executed combats.

bg Ivan 'MinD_ContRoL' Borislavov pulled off a multiple-hero Vacuum-Walk combo after de Adrian 'Fata' Trinks had dropped the "meatball"


Picking heroes with great AoE spells such as

Tidehunter, Invoker or Darkseer

, Liquid managed to pull off greatly-timed combos that turned combats into their favour.

Defensive support picks

also seemed to work out great for Liquid. Clutch

False Promises and Shallow Graves

many times saved de Adrian 'Fata' Trinks and fi Lasse 'Matumbaman' Urpalainen from imminent death, wasting the opponents’ firepower and major cooldowns, resulting in Liquid managing to outlast and outdamage their enemies.

de Kuro S. 'KuroKy' Takhasomi's impeccable use of Oracle's ultimate saved FATA- from grave danger


With these results, it is almost certain that LGD and Liquid will advance to the next round, having placed top 3 in their respective groups. Other teams who cross paths with them will surely have to watch out for these Major qualifier winners.

Standings after Day 1:





What do you think of Day One's results? Who do you think will make it to the playoffs? Tell us in the comment section below!



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