posted by Jooehn,
us Evil Geniuses have achieved what a week ago appeared impossible, they've bested eu Team Secret in two straight games, ending their run in the Dota 2 Asia Championship. With two excellent drafts, solid teamwork and great individual play from all involved, EG are looking strong going into tomorrow's Bo5 Grand Final against cn Vici Gaming.


Dunking galore




After barely coming out on top in two close three game series against world Cloud 9 and cn Big God, Secret was looking exhausted. From the blow of the horn to the crumbling of their ancient, it was all about Evil Geniuses. Despite getting a good start when Secret's supports caught us Saahil 'Universe' Arora in a precarious situation and spilling the first blood, it was nothing but a brutal game for them.

Universe gets caught and bleeds blue


se Ludwig 'zai' Wåhlberg once more on the Broodmother, was doing well in his safe lane and the call to rotate him to the toplane worked out extraordinary well and resulted in two fast kills. A fast Hand of Midas allowed him to stay on top of the net worth chart for a long time. However, the rest of Secret were unable to make use of the space he created and slowly fell behind the impressive farming from the EG cores. se Gustav 's4' Magnusson's Puck and Universe's Axe got their Blink Daggers in about the same time, but the rotations from s4 fell short and he could not make good use of it. Universe on the other hand was the main reason EG won in such a convincing manner, not only did he land several clutch Berserker's Calls on zai to pick him off, he was also chopping like crazy.

Slam-dunking history in the making


pk Sumail 'SumaiL' Syed Hassan's Tinker already had a great start as he was winning the midlane hard against ca Artour 'Arteezy' Babaev's Medusa and with the aid of the impressive Axe play from Universe, his item progression went out of hand. With the two of them snowballing out of control, Lycan played by us Clinton 'Fear' Loomis could peacefully tend to his buisness and secure one objective after another. Secret had no countermeasure to enforce with s4 not being on top of his game and sloppy positioning allowed EG to increase their lead in kills and gold. Without breaking a single sweat, EG could 33 minutes into the game, march up the toplane and demolish the base of Secret.



ppd - The Lion king




It was clear that both teams were feeling the tension rise as the second game had a slow start, and all 10 heroes on the map trod carefully for the first five minutes. First to act was s4 who rotated his Axe to the midlane, setting up an easy kill for Arteezy's Sniper on SumaiL. s4 chose to pick up an early Vanguard which proved to be a wise decision when he withstood the bashing of countless enemies in a midlane brawl without dying. His teammates could clean up the mess he left, scoring a few kills and things were shaping up greatly for Secret with everything going according to the plan.



EG's discipline and teamfight execution would come to halt their success a few minutes later, as SumaiL's Primal Split along with a double target Earth Spike from us Peter 'ppd' Dager's Lion wiped out three Secret members and allowed them to bring down the tier one tower mid in the process. ppd was a big factor in this game with his on point disables and nukes that caused many issues for Arteezy in particular. When the EG captain aquired his Blink Dagger 20 minutes in, there was no stopping him from making plays. Together with SumaiL's Brewmaster he turned the entire picture of the game in his team's favor.

ppd surprises Arteezy with a nuke to the face


Secret lost all their momentum and when Fear, who had been farming for the greater deal of the game, joined his four protectors with a fresh Eye of Skadi, Secret had no means to put up against the resilient hero. With the added ability to kite around Axe and the poor Bristleback of zai who had an awful game, EG could walk over Secret in every single fight that emerged. The game developed into a slow seige of the Dire base where the hitpoints of Secret's structures fell little by little. Even though it took quite some time for EG to finish the project, they were never even remotely close to losing their advantage. Arteezy got online far to late and even though the Medusa was killable at that point, EG could simply keep throwing their bodies at the base and eventually got the barracks down.

Medusa in true raid boss mode


Secret put up a good fight in the last 10 minutes, keeping their base from falling even though they were facing Mega Creeps. But in the end EG won with every single one of their tier two towers still standing upright and it was a well executed and systematical victory. They took no unnecessary risks and focused on what was important in order to come out on top. They now move on to the Grand Finals where they get a chance to redeem theirselves against cn Vici Gaming, who kicked them down to the lower bracket in the first place.




Standings




This article was written by se John Wimarsson, joinDOTA's Senior Writer.Jooehn is a gaming enthusiast who fell head over heels for Dota 2 after watching TI3. If he's not playing his guitar, writing for jD or lying on his couch dreaming about space, he's probably in solo queue trying to reach the 5K MMR dream.Location: Lund, SwedenFollow him on @Jooehn.

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