iG out of MarsTV League, Newbee shine « News

After securing the top 2 seeds of the Chinese TI4 Qualifiers yesterday, LGD and CIS had no time for rest. Today the MarsTV Dota 2 League kicked off in the same location, a 2-day tournament featuring the best teams in China and 150,000 RMB (~$24.000) up for grabs. The match of the day was LGD's encounter with Team DK.

Newbee - Image courtesy of Sgamer

LGD had much to prove in today's groupstage, even after silencing the critics in yesterday's final of the Chinese TI4 qualifiers against CIS, who were also participating in the tournament. In addition to these two, the tournament contains invited teams:

Invictus Gaming,

Newbee,

Team DK and

Vici Gaming and as the groupstage played out, one could tell that LGD had begun to find their feet again.

LGD - Image courtesy of Sgamer

The drafts of the groupstage resembled the ones from the TI4 qualifiers, with heroes like Brewmaster, Mirana, Dragon Knight, Tidehunter, Doom and Wraith King getting a lot of love. In this single best of one, round robin format, Newbee looked most comfortable. They strolled through their five games without any trouble, ending the day undefeated. The closest they came to losing was in the game against LGD, where the latter took the lead early on. However, great coordination and patience from Newbee turned their Anti-Mage, played by

Chen "Hao" Zhihao into a 722 GPM beast.

Even though they dropped the game against Newbee, LGD also looked very strong, obviously carrying the momentum from yesterday's finals. Using heroes like Clockwerk, played fantastically by

Yao "Yao" Zhengzheng and Doom. CIS frankly looked beat after yesterday's loss and couldn't bring home a single victory. iG, DK and VG looked far more balanced and looked incredibly even when playing each other, with the only exception iG vs VG.

This showed clearly when the groupstage was finished, as they all ended up with a record of 2 wins and 3 losses. This put them all in a tie-breaker, where VG and DK both won their games against iG, which only made their own match-up necessary for deciding their seeding. In the end Newbee, LGD, VG and DK are the top four of this stage and they advance to the playoffs which will be rounding up this tournament tomorrow.

LGD vs DK - Best Game of the day

The drafting put both of these teams in their respective comfort zones, DK with the Tiny for

Chai Yee "Mushi" Fung, along with Centaur Warrunner and Sand King who both synergise extremely well with Tiny's Toss. Not to mention picking up the Weaver for

Zhilei "Burning" Xu. LGD on the other hand got the Invoker and Lifestealer for

Zhang "Rabbit" Wang, who they teamed up with

Leong "DDC" Fatmeng on Lich in the midlane against Mushi.

DK got first blood in the botlane after only a minute, when

Zeng Rong "MMY" Le who was handling the support Mirana, landed a Sacred Arrow right in Invoker's face setting up an easy kill for Burning. This was the starting signal for the aggressive early game that followed with great rotations and diving from the DK squad, who used their gank heavy line-up to great effectiveness. However, what most time would be an advantageous trade for them, often turned into an even outcome as LGD always were quick with their responses and counter rotations.

This kept the game open with a score of 5-5 which played right along with LGD's game plan and soon it was their turn to gear up and set their desired game pace. DK's only choice by then was to simply wait for Mushi's Tiny to get rolling, having been delayed by having to buy a Ghostscepter to survive the powerfull rightclicks from Lifestealer. Until then they simply had to settle for the few kills they got and trade tier ones for tier two towers. The first good fight in a very long time came around 26 minutes in their own jungle close to the toplane. Tiny had purchased a Blink Dagger and DK could capitalise on bad positioning and poor communication from LGD after trying to catch Burning, which gave them a 4 for 1 trade in the end.

LGD still held on tightly to the lead and started to put pressure on Dire's middle tier 3 tower, which after some effort, they demolished. They could not push further though, they simply didn't have the means to. Instead of standing highground waiting for aggression from LGD with his other teammates, Mushi roamed around the Radiant side of the map, killing creepwaves. This completely put LGD's push on hiatus and they could do nothing but return to their side and force Mushi away. 33 minutes in, both teams were tired of waiting and as Rabbit walked up to the mid melee barracks of DK only to be thrown out by Tiny, a huge fight broke out. It lasted for 1 and a half minute, with a lot of blood spilled, prompting five buybacks between both teams. In the end DK came out on top and proceeded to pick up an uncontested Roshan. LGD rushed to the pit, but were far too late and ended up getting caught out by Team DK who were riding the momentum from the last fight and easily picked up 2 free kills.

There was now no stopping the DK line-up led by Mushi and the heavy righclick from Burning's Weaver and suddenly it was their game to lose with a 15,000 gold lead. The next fight also went in DK's favor who despite double Ravages from Tidehunter, picked up 4 kills and lost only Sand King who bought back. However, when Tidehunter and Lifestealer caught Tiny out of position and killed him, it opened up for the continuation of LGD's push of the midlane barracks, which simply was Rabbit running in and hitting the melee barracks once to bring it down.

Tiny bought back right away and LGD retreated down the midlane, but they did not come further than the river until DK caught up with them, thus another crazy fight started. Now it was LGD's turn to come out ahead as Rabbit disintegrated the DK line-up. Not one, not two, but three buybacks were used simultaneously, including Weaver who immediately time lapsed back into the fight only to find it was over. Only Rubick and Lifestealer died for the Radiant side and Team DK could do nothing but solemnly return to their side and regroup.

One of the biggest plays of the game turned out to be by Rubick in collaboration with his teammates. He got ambushed by the entire DK team in the midlane on the Radiant side and he should've gone down really quickly to their high damage output. But with his ghostscepter, a well timed use of Force Staff and a great spell combination from Invoker, he somehow survived and almost costed an overly greedy Burning his life. The first destruction of a complete set of barracks of the game was actually DK's after winning a fight in the midlane. Weaver went down first of all, but another buyback into Timelapse gave DK the upper hand and they could chase down three of LGD's heroes quite easily before pushing down the botlane. It was still impossible to say who was going to win at this point of the game, with the clock passing the 60 minute mark and DK still sitting on a 10-15k gold lead.

The end of this highly entertaining game, happened quite abruptly. LGD led by Rabbit, fully equipped with items and armed to the teeth with raw damage simply walked into the Dire base and went for the killing push. This surprising decision must've been equally astonishing for DK as the fight that broke out right on top of their Ancient was easily won by LGD. Neither Weaver nor Tiny had buyback and they could do nothing but stare when LGD leveled their Ancient with the ground after 68 minutes of amusement. The VOD of this epic encounter can be viewed below.

VOD of DK versus LGD

Tune in tomorrow for more action and assuredly more great Chinese Dota. Get all the information from the MarsTV Dota 2 League coverage page and watch the action live on jD Green.

This article was written by

John Wimarsson, joinDOTA's Writer.Jooehn is a gaming enthusiast who only recently 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 4K MMR dream.Location: Västervik, SwedenFollow him on @Jooehn.