DAC Playoff matchups set! TI champions to duke it out in lower bracket

posted by Abelle,

With the conclusion of the DAC group stage, the first round of playoff matchups have been decided. The upper bracket was determined by placement, while the 3rd place teams in the lower bracket chose their opponents.

As it turns out, both 3rd place teams chose the last place teams from the opposite group, so

LGD.Forever Young chose

iG.Vitality while

Team Liquid chose

Team Faceless*.

While OG's dominance of Group A was entirely expected, the rest of the group stage results were much less predictable. Of all the teams vying for the second upper bracket spot from Group A, Team Empire pulled it off with a 2-2-1 record.

Their upper bracket spot wasn't sealed until their final game against Wings. The CIS squad needed to win just one game of the two-game series against the TI champions, but with Wings taking Game 1, everything came down to Game 2. With Slark and Phantom Assassin putting constant pressure on Wings' heroes, Empire dominated the game and took their place in the upper bracket.

Group B held plenty of surprises, from

Invictus Gaming's dominance (

Xu 'BurNIng' Zhilei is back!) to

Team Liquid and

Evil Geniuses's struggles, to

Team NP's rather solid results.

Now, we'll have to wait and see how the ever-volatile single game series will treat the eight lower bracket teams. Four of these teams will be eliminated from the tournament main stage on the first day, and with Evil Geniuses facing Wings Gaming in one of the matches, one TI champion will be out of the tournament in last place.

In the upper bracket, we have a chance at Newbee and Team Empire finally facing off in Dota (instead of just on twitter). It won't be easy though. Newbee will have to get through OG, who have only dropped a single game all tournament long. Team Empire, on the other hand, will need to best the B-God himself, but after seeing what they can do in the groupstage this doesn't seem at all far-fetched.