Newbee and LGD showed off great shape in yesterday's groupstage of MarsTV Dota 2 League, with a 5-0 respective 4-1 record against the other teams that will represent China at TI4. Could they maintain their momentum in the semi-finals against DK and Vici Gaming?

Semi-Finals

Newbee vs DK

Newbee showed in this series what made them top the charts in the first day of the tournament, with early ganks, huge midgame fights and overall top-notch team coordination setting their play style for the entire series. That didn't stop them, however, from stomping every lane in game one, to progress smoothly with a 3,000 experience lead at the 10-minute mark to beat DK in almost every engagement, with Banana playing a solid game on his Sand King to help Mu snowball completely out of control, with a monster kill streak before the 30-minute mark. Hao's commitment to join his team in early fights proved useful, as he went on to get a godlike streak of his own.

Both teams went for team fighting lineups in game 2, DK getting the more ganking part of the draft. Newbee made their comeback after a horrendous laning phase on the back of solid plays from Banana's Ancient Apparition and Xiao8's Beastmaster, who seemed to get the most kills out of every engagement.

Overall, the series showed what made Newbee one of the top teams in China: Fast rotations, wise decisions, and great team coordination.

Image courtesy of Sgamer

VG vs LGD

In the 2nd part of the semi-final, the Chinese contestants picked up more midgame team fight lineups, with some access to late game. VG won the early game in pretty much all of the games, but failed to capitalize on their advantage, while LGD proved to be more versatile and picked up great fights whenever they needed to. This, along with capitalizing on every mistake VG made, and the great performance from Lin and Yao allowed them to take control of the midgame phase in 2 out of the 3 games, and moving on to play Newbee in the grand finals.

Grand Finals - LGD vs Newbee

Game 1

The first draft of the grand finals gave both teams pretty much what they wanted. LGD once again grabbed the Lifestealer for

Zhang "Rabbit" Wang, a hero which he had much success with in yesterday's match-up against DK. They also got their hands on the much favored Clockwerk for

Yao "Yao" Zhengzheng and Rubick who

Xie "DD" Bin operated with great effectiveness in the groupstage. Ancient Apparition and Shadow Fiend rounded up their line-up which focused heavily on team fighting. Newbee on the other hand went for heroes with more single target damage output and lockdown. Mentionable is that the very popular Brewmaster got picked up and put in the hands of

Zhang "Mu" Pan, Doom for

Zhang "xiao8" Ning and

Wang "Banana" Jiao got to show off his famous Enchantress skills.

LGD started out by smoking up and resolutely invading the Dire jungle to ward off their neutral camps to slow down Banana's farm and ganking potential. While trying to remove the LGD wards, Banana accidently blocked his own camp with a sentry ward, helping LGD's cause. Therefore it would take four minutes until Newbee could get their first real gank off, which occurred in the Radiant jungle close to the midlane. A three man rotation with Shackles into War Stomp from Banana's enchanted Centaur resulted in an easy first blood on

Leong "ddc" Fatmeng's Ancient Apparition.

First blood for Newbee

However, the early game, post first blood, was completely even. After overstaying their welcome in the Radiant jungle, finishing up a few stacked neutral camps which they found, LGD got fed up and made Newbee pay with two deaths for one. Additionally, a great gank coming out from LGD resulted in a kill on

Wang "SanSheng" Zhaohui's Shadow Shaman, putting the score at 3-3. The high levels of these two teams showed throughout the early game, especially when the first big teamfight broke out between LGD's midlane tier one and tier two towers. Fighting 5 versus 5 in such a location before the 10 minute mark would normally result in a devastating outcome, but because of great coordination only two heroes went down, Clockwerk and Ancient Apparition for LGD. Small wins like this gave Newbee and especially Mu on Brewmaster the upper hand in this game, he finished a Blink Dagger at 11:30 and there was no stopping him after that. The early Mekansm for

Chen "Hao" Zhihao also made a great difference in the long-running fights that broke out, allowing him to rain poisonous damage onto LGD and secure five kills. 15 minutes into the game, Newbee's lead was steadily increasing and had reached 11-4 in kills, with a 7500 gold lead and a 5000 advantage in experience.

Newbee had no intention of throwing this game whatsoever and started closing out the game systematically, not dropping any more major fights. They demolished the tier one towers easily, picked up an uncontested kill of Roshan and proceeded to push down the tier two tower on the botlane. When LGD brought down their first tower of the game in the midlane, Newbee responded quickly and made them pay with two deaths followed by another tier two tower. It didn't take long until Newbee were standing on LGD's highground, beating down the mid tier three tower with ease. Not even a Requiem of Souls could bring single member of the Newbee's line-up down, they were simply too far ahead and traded three kills and a buyback for nothing. The last thing for Newbee to do before sealing the deal, was to regroup, heal up and go for the GG, which LGD called close to the 30 minute mark.

Game 2

LGD kept holding on to their teamfight oriented drafting in game two with Dark Seer, Enigma, Brewmaster, Wraith King and Mirana. Newbee went for the Lifestealer this time around, great for surviving LGD's magic damage, picked up the Tidehunter and surprisingly finished off by adding Morphling to their line-up who was to be played by Hao in the midlane against Rabbit's Brewmaster.

Newbee commenced by going really aggressive and invaded the Dire jungle, where they immediately found LGD's entire team trying to prevent blockage of the neutral camps. A fight broke out and Hao's Morphling got the first blood by killing Brewmaster, much thanks to an excellent three man Impale by Nyx Assassin, played by Banana. He didn't stop there, but followed that up with another, equally great 3 man impale, which secured Newbee another kill on the support Mirana. After walking back to their lanes, they finished their main objective and made life harder for the Enigma, by putting some wards in the neutral camps. LGD did well to keep themselves in the game despite having such a devastating start. Smart rotations kept Newbee ganks from ending in absolute disasters and two kills on xiao8's Tidehunter from LGD's trilane in the toplane evened out the score and the gold graph.

Mu and xiao8 kill DD in the toplane

The biggest and most important fight of the early game occurred at 11:30 beneath Radiant's mid tier one tower. LGD's use of Moonlight Shadows allowed them to catch Hao off guard, lock him down and kill him off with a Wraithfire Blast into Sacred Arrow. This fight kept on going tremendously well for LGD and horribly wrong for Newbee as the Ravage was on cooldown and the results after the mist had cleared were awful, five kills, a buyback from Tidehunter and a tier one tower lost for Newbee. The only thing they gained was triggering the Reincarnation of the Wraith King, whom they killed off with the Ravage one minute later. LGD's movements this game were the main factor that kept them in the lead for a long time. Well timed smokes, uses of Moonlight Shadow, Blink Daggers on Rabbit and

Xu "Lin" Ziyang and overall control of the map gave them a solid 4000 gold lead around 20 minutes in, after just finishing off an uncontested Roshan. Worth to mention though, is that Newbee's Morphling was topping the Net Worth chart throughout the game.

A breeze of hope was blown into the Newbee line-up after LGD let their greed take over, trying to break highground after 25 minutes. Rabbit and company managed to kill off Newbee's resisting force without any issues at first, but as soon as Morhpling decided to join the fight and buybacks came out from the dead Newbee heroes, the events took quite the turn. In a long-lasting chase, Newbee managed to bring down four of the LGD members along with the Aegis of Immortal that Brewmaster was carrying. This was a much needed win for Newbee since Morphling now could finish up his second item after his Linken's Sphere: the Ethereal Blade. The following minutes was all about Morphling, who spent his time splitpushing the toplane. As soon as any member of LGD showed up, he just popped his combo: E-blade into Adaptive Strike and blew away their hitpoints. He even managed to obliterate the poor support Mirana at one point with only the use of his "shotgun".

Goldgraph after the highground fight

The Morphling was what kept LGD from breaking the highground not only with the splitpush, but with great use of the Replicate, he could instantly be back at his base and force off the siegers at any point. The second Enigma showed outside the Radiant base, Morphling simply used his combination and took him down to less than a third of his max hitpoints, making it impossible for him to stay. When LGD tried to gank him while splitpushing, he could simply use his Replicate again to escape, creating much needed space for his fellow teammates to farm up their items.

The first teamfight in a long while took place just above the Rosh pit, at the Dire side ancients. While Hao and Mu finished off Roshan insanely fast, Banana got caught out by LGD. What looked like an easy win for Newbee, turned the other way around in a matter of seconds as the drafted teamfight combo of LGD managed to do exactly what they intended from the start. A Blackhole into an excellent Vacuum/Wall of Replica from Yao wiped out three heroes from Newbee as well as the Aegis held by Morphling. Now LGD had to make use of the advantage they just bought themselves and they went for the hard to get Radiant highground. Unfortunately, they did not count on the buyback from Morphling, who together with his team forced LGD out from their base and chased them down, getting three easy kills while only losing a tier three tower. They continued by pushing out the midlane and getting the first set of barracks of the game for themselves. However the action did not stop here, a fresh and resurrected LGD made haste and rushed into the base of Newbee, grabbed a couple of more kills and finally the dreaded set of midlane barracks.

What came to close out the last very intense, back and forth 10 minutes of gameplay, was Wraith King getting caught out by the Newbee line-up and forced to buyback. Newbee did not fall back though, they now had the goal and last objective in vision. Newbee did not have the means to stop Hao on his Morphling, now also equipped with Manta Style, Black King Bar and Butterfly. Together with the rest of his team, he quickly put an end to the teamfight that occurred at the tier three tower bot and also the game, after 52 minutes of gameplay.

This concludes the MarsTV Dota 2 League tournament, with a great performance from undefeated Newbee and not to mention LGD, who fairly silenced the critics. Did you expect this outcome?

1st ~$16,030 -

Newbee

2nd ~$ 3,206 -

LGD

3rd ~$ 1,603 -

DK and

Vici Gaming

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.

Additional writing by

Mu'taz Abumathkur, a joinDOTA writer.Motazam10 joined dota during 2012 greeviling, and has been hooked to the scene since the TI3 Chinese qualifiers. His time spent away from the scene is somewhere making Russian friends on DotA, or studying mathLocation: Jeddah, Saudi Arabia