posted by Abelle,

"This is escalating very Mineski-ly"
It would be hard to argue that Mineski's strong showing at this event was due to luck in the single-game series of the group stage after seeing the absolute pummelling they handed to OpTic Gaming in their match today. The first game of the series went pretty terrible for the NA squad, ending with 9 kills to Mineski's 25 at the 32-minute mark. Seven of OpTic's nine kills came by the 13-minute mark before things went full Mineski.
If you thought that was rough, avert your eyes from the beatdown in Game 2. This time, OpTic took just two kills over the course of the game. They lacked physical damage and Mineski's heroes were all very difficult to kill, especially with Daryl Koh 'iceiceice' Pei Xiang's Abaddon helping to keep everyone alive. This fight about halfway through the game tells the whole story well.
With Mineski's win, both NA Dota squads have been sent to the DAC lower bracket where they'll have to survive two rounds of single-game series if they hope to make it through.
The first Game 3!
Finally a Game 3. #DAC2018— Wykrhm Reddy (@wykrhm) April 4, 2018
It's a bit hard to believe but every single best-of-three so far in Shanghai has been a sweep. Though they weren't all one-sided, all four Breakout matches and the first three matches of today ended with a 2-0 score. Thankfully, that streak was broken with the final match of the day between TNC Predator and Vici Gaming.
TNC had started the series with a relatively one-sided stomp. Vici Gaming quickly struck back in Game 2 with a Slark for Zhang 'Eurus' Chengjun, who went 16/0/15 in the longer but equally one-sided Game 2.
Game 3 was where things got really interesting. TNC drafted a support Tiny for Timothy 'Tims' Randrup but with Samson E. 'SamH' Hidalgo's Batrider having a very difficult offlane, the support player rose up to become the de-facto position three. He farmed a 12-minute Blink Dagger and 18-minute Shadow Blade to become a serious threat. Meanwhile, Raven's Gyrcopter and Armel Paul 'Armel' Tabios's Timbersaw were both doing very well to move TNC further and further into the lead.
At its peak, TNC's lead was 28k net worth but that all disappeared in a blink of an eye when Raven lost his newly purchased Divine Rapier in a beautifully executed counter-initiation by Vici Gaming around the Radiant ancients.
Things went from bad to worse for TNC from that point. Paparazi's Dragon Knight now hit for over 600 damage with his shiny new Rapier. Raven saved up for a second Rapier and Vici Gaming dropped the one on Paparazi, but even with the second Rapier Raven's Gyrocopter, a five on five smoke clash saw the Rapier end up on Yang 'Eleven' Wei Ren's Underlord. Vici Gaming quickly took Rosh before charging down top to finish off the game.
After that epic game, the second day of DAC playoff action was concluded. Tomorrow, we'll see two teams eliminated in lower bracket single-game series followed by a pair of upper bracket best-of-threes.
Header photo source: Perfect World
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