posted by Abelle,
Road to ukraine baby!— Kuku Palad (@kukudota) March 13, 2017
Both of these teams were sent to the lower bracket by
Team Faceless*, and both were now fighting for a chance to join the Singaporean squad in Kiev.Mineski took the early lead in this game thanks to
Ryan Jay 'raging-potato' Qui's Alchemist getting off to a quick start with Radiance, Boots of Travel and Octarine Core by the 22 minute mark. TNC Predator had the answer however with seemingly endless lockdown in the form of Troll Warlord bashes and stuns from Vengeful Spirit, Slardar and Nyx (not to mention an Abyssal Blade on Juggernaut, just for good measure).TNC began to take over the game at around the 25 minute mark and
Mineski were unable to regain control.Now this is where the real action was. What a game. Everything about the draft from both teams addeed up to crazy team fights. You've got Aghhanim's Scepter Nyx Assassin, Earth Spriit's entire kit, support Weaver with Aghanim's to save Ursa (who also had Aghanim's), Ember Spirit dodging and juking around every fight, Magnus with big Reverse Polarities and Empower on Juggernaut's Omnislashes, Centaur Warrunner with Aghanim's, Dazzle with clutch Shallow Graves and of course
Timothy 'Tims' Randrup playing out of his mind on Rubick.Anyone watching this game had their jaws on the floor by the end, as Mineski pulled off massive base defenses and fights around the map before taking a win and tying up the series 1-1.
After all the excitement of Game 2, the series finale was rather anticlimactic. TNC picked Juggernaut for a third time, but this time gave it to
Carlo 'Kuku' Palad while Marc Polo Luis 'Raven' Fausto took the Weaver. A surprise 4th pick offlane Omniknight seemed to force Mineski to go back for a Diffusal carrier, but 
Galvin 'Meracle-' Kang Jian Wen's Mirana wasn't even able to build one as TNC took the win in under 30 minutes, with Mineski taking just 6 kills to TNC's 21.With this win, TNC are hot on Team Faceless' heels, threatening their status as the top Southeast Asian team. They tied Faceless' score in the round robin (and beat them in the head to head matchup), but lost to them in an action-packed best-of-three.
After TNC's first place finish at WESG earlier this year, it seemed like they had a chance at being invited to The Kiev Major, but Valve snubbed SEA entirely while giving three invites to Chinese squads
Newbee, Team Random* and VGJ.Thunder.Luckily for the region, there were two slots available through regional qualifiers, so both TNC and Team Faceless will now have a chance to prove themselves in the Major. If they can place highly enough to earn a direct invite to TI7, it would give even more SEA teams a chance to qualify for that event this summer.
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