posted by Sun_Tzu,
The second day of The Premier League Season 4 is now behind us, and although one team was eliminated from the competition under unfortunate circumstances, three teams remain with the order yet to be determined as they play it out for the $5,000 first prize.

Tomorrow we will see the Consolation Finals played out at 18:00 CEST, followed by the Grand Finals at 21:00 CEST.


eu Fnatic.EU forfeits game against us Team Liquid



It was never going to be a good match for eu Fnatic.EU, as their mid player de Kai 'H4nn1' Hanbuckers was in the air over the atlantic ocean during the game, traveling to the United States so as to be available for tomorrow's G-1 Champions League match against se The Alliance. However, as they lost game one and headed into game two, the final nail was set in the coffin of Fnatic, as dk Johan 'n0tail' Sundstein lost power and was unable to rejoin the game. Seeing little point in delaying proceedings further, Fnatic bowed out of the competition, giving us Team Liquid the win on a forfeit, as there was no path back for Fnatic with Liquid playing far better.

Team Liquid proceeds to the consolation final after a forfeit by Fnatic.EU.

se The Alliance vs. ru Virtus.Pro



VP went for a surprising gank stategy with ru Ilya 'Airman' Pevcaev playing a carry Night Stalker and backed up by ua Sergey 'kSi' Kuzin on Nature's Prophet and ru Oleg 'Crazy' Kolesnichenko on Zeus. The Swedes countered by sending a aggressive trilane to the bottom lane, building it around se Henrik 'AdmiralBulldog' Ahnberg and supplementing it with a Rubick, played by se Jerry 'EGM' Lundkvist, which ended up providing them with the highly valuable Null Field against the magic damage of VP's lineup. However while Alliance was able to dominate the two solo vs. solo lanes, they gave up some kills on the tri vs. tri, and ended up abandoning it in favour of stacking their own woods and moving around the map. This movement ended up benefitting the Alliance greatly, as they turned around the kill advantage even as VP was supposed to have the stronger early game, and set themselves up to control the pace of what little there would be of a mid game. With se Gustav 's4' Magnusson delivering his usual stupifying performance on Templar Assassin, the Russians ended up tapping out at only 21 minutes played.

With Alliance picking up the Chaos Knight and Wisp combo, VP read their play and knew their preference for trilaning such lineups, sending their trilane built around kSi on Batrider on the offensive, and was able to complicate the life of se Jonathan 'Loda' Berg's Chaos Knight during the early lanes. VP also switched things up with putting Airman in the middle lane, dominating with the Outworld Devourer against the Puck of s4. With things going against them, the Swedes scrambled to find a means to regain some momentum, and while a few skirmishes did eventually go their way, the grasp of the game could be felt slowly slipping from them as Crazy on Nature's Prophet took the lead on net worth followed by Airman. ru Sergey 'Ars-Art' Revin on Bane also played a huge part in VP gaining the edge in the mid game teamfights, with great use of Fiend's Grip and adding to the impressive amount of control of the Russians, who also built two Scythe of Vyse. Eventually things got so bad that the Alliance was no longer able to find openings for their big ultimates, instead being whittled down in fights as VP outlasted them by the slightest of margins, taking the second game of the series.

Heading into game three, VP drafted their recently developed chase strategy, with the key support heroes of Disruptor and Juggernaut as well as Lifestealer, Puck and Dark Seer for a combination of chase and anti-juke. The response from Alliance was to pick a strong teamfight lineup with Loda taking up the Gyrocopter and s4 the Magnus for that powerful teamfight control. As neither team was willing to contest the others safelane, the rotation of supports became the focus of the early game, with the Alliance getting the slightly better of it as they managed to escape many of VP's ganks with clutch teleports out, while Bulldog fortified their advantage by controlling the enemy jungle. However when the VP lineup started to kick in and they started to take fights on the cusp of the mid game, things went quickly out of the hands of the Swedes, with the high mobility of Crazy on Puck and the control of ru Yaroslav 'NS' Kuznetsov on Disruptor just decimating any opposition. However, even as VP took fights, they lacked the pushing power, which allowed Bulldog to keep the map control slightly in favour of the Alliance. Even as it seemed that things were slipping out of the hands of the Swedes, patient smart play from the whole team allowed them to slowly get Loda enough damage to start winning fights, and with VP throwing away buybacks, it ended up being the Alliance who claimed the first Barracks of the game. From this point onwards, the advantage mounter for the Swedes, and ultimately it was VP's attempt to sneak a Roshan kill which doomed them, as they died on the back end and then lost the last of their base.

The Alliance proceed to the Grand Final with a 2-1 win over Virtus.Pro.

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