posted by Tezzeret,

The LAN Finals of StarLadder StarSeries Season 6 have been kicked off with the customary two games, pitting Virtus.Pro against iCCup, while defending champions The Alliance faced off against their DreamHack Summer 2013 Grand Finals opponents Quantic Gaming. Games will pick up again for the second day at 16:00 CEST, July 5th.

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iCCup vs Virtus.Pro

While iCCup got off to a good start thanks to their Treant Protector pick-up, the nerfed state of the hero allowed Virtus.Pro to keep the early trades even while shutting down the progression of their Broodmother. Eventually the early game power of Treant tapered off, and iCCup lacked the ability to smoothly transition into their late game, instead allowing the Outworld Devourer of VP to take over the game, allowing them to get onto the high ground on the back of winning teamfights and force out the 'GG' at 36 minutes with two sets of Barracks down for iCCup.

VP picked up a strong teamfight and mid game lineup for game two, creating space for their Alchemist to free farm and snowball out of control. While iCCup put up a decent fight once more during the early game, claiming early towers and being active around the map, once VP had their teamfight combination of Vacuum, Wall of Replica, Echo Slam and Sonic Wave up and running, iCCup's ability to take head on fights quickly diminished, and with the Alchemist becoming very farmed very quickly, VP stormed past their Ukrainian brethren to claim a clear 2-0 victory and advance to the winner bracket finals.

Virtus.Pro defeat iCCup 2-0.

The Alliance vs Quantic Gaming

Unfortunately,

Titouan 'Sockshka' Merloz injured his left hand earlier this week, which caused him to have to miss out on the StarLadder LAN Finals. In his place, Quantic decided to play with

mousesports renouned carry player

Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier.

Adapting their style slightly to fit Black, Quantic drafted an Anti-Mage for game one, while giving away Wisp and Enchantress, resulting in a fairly unconventional challenging dual lane from Alliance which no less worked out ok early on along with the offensive jungle Enchantress. While both teams drafted greedily, The Alliance were able to get the slightly better start once kills started to be traded, especially once the Bounty Hunter Track started to factor into things, allowing them to slowly build up a decisive advantage and force Quantic to give up game one.

For the second game, The Alliance fell back on the Keeper of the Light and Phantom Lancer which they still execute with great precision, which Quantic got to experience first hand as they were punished for each mistake made as they tried to offensive trilane against the Swedes. While the defending champions maintained control through-out much of the game by effective split-pushing and denying Quantic space on the map, the challengers put up a valient fight until an unfortunate Roshan fight around the 50 minute mark, where they managed to kill of Black without his buyback up as well as snatching the Aegis, allowing them to claim the game and the series.

The Alliance take their first series as defending champions 2-0 over Quantic Gaming.