image courtesy of Newbee
Newbee claim their spot in the Perfect World Masters grand finals with a 2-1 victory over Vici Gaming.
With a guaranteed top 2 finish for the winning team, the winners’ bracket final at the Perfect World Masters minor was assured to be a fantastic matchup between 2 of the best teams in China. Vici Gaming were looking almost unstoppable in the tournament so far but who better to go up against them and attempt to drop them into the lower bracket finals than Newbee, who started of the tournament at a slower pace but had begun to show their dominance in the playoff stages. With 3 Chinese teams in the top 4, there were definitely to be some amazing games of Dota 2 action coming our way today.
Game One
VG secured a quick first blood prior to 2 minutes having passed as they managed to drop Chun ‘SCCC’ Song’s Ember Spirit in the mid lane, but Newbee responded quickly with a kill onto Zeng ‘Ori’ Jiaoyang’s Storm Spirt, punishing his greed. By 12 minutes, VG had secured a 2-6 lead along with a solid 3k lead on the net worth graphs. The Dire were looking to control the early game a lot more, finding kills around the map and securing early objectives. With just after 20 minutes passed, VG found a fantastic opening to rip through 4 from the Radiant line up – which gave them an easy Roshan kill and aegis.
Vici Gaming started to run away with the game very quickly from this point, constantly finding easy kills on most of the Newbee team, while still finding the tower objectives on the map. With less than 30 minutes passed, Newbee could see no way back into the game and threw in the towel, calling GG and giving game one of the series to Vici Gaming.
Game Two
Newbee needed to win this game to keep themselves alive in the series and keep them from dropping to the lower bracket finals – and they managed to start in a strong manner as they claimed an early first blood onto Ren ‘Young.Eleven’ Yangwei’s TImbersaw in the top lane. With constant aggression coming out from both teams, especially in the mid lane, the score line moved to 4-3 in Newbee’s favour by only 5 minutes. With another 5 minutes on top of that, the score line more than doubled on both sides as both teams drew fairly even across the board.
Newbee begun to look extremely menacing up until 15 minutes, but a great fight from VG saw the pressure be quelled for a few moments, even though Newbee were still able to claim an uncontested aegis. The game settled down into a fairly even pace – but Newbee still controlled a small lead and looked more likely to find the late game victory. At the same time which the previous game ended, Newbee looked to the high ground in the bottom lane, with a fresh aegis in hand too. But it did not last long as Newbee quickly realized that they would need more items to break the Dire’s defenses.
But Newbee found the perfect opening with 35 minutes passed and after they dropped 4 from the Dire line up, they breached the high ground in the mid lane, dropping the barracks and ripping through VG’s line up. With no chance of coming back into the game, the GG was called by VG and the series was tied up at 1-1 with a decisive game three to split the teams.
Game Three
The third and decisive game of the series would give one team a guaranteed top 2 spot while the other would have to fight through another best-of-three in an attempt to make it to the grand finals. Newbee were able to find the early first blood as Damien ‘KPii’ Chok and Hu ‘Kaka’ Liangzhi combined forces to take down Zhang ‘Paparazi’ Chengjun’s Lone Druid. This game was moving at a much slower pace with a 3-1 lead in Newbee’s favour by 10 minutes.
But suddenly VG came to life, finding 4 kills and the bottom lane tier 1 tower as they utilized their great team composition to secure a highly favorable fight. Moving forward from this, the Dire team begun to take over the game, taking great team fights and controlling the map objectives through the early game. With an aegis in hand and just over 20 minutes passed, VG continued to take map control but Newbee were able to find great counter initiations to keep themselves in the game.
By 28 minutes, Newbee found an opening to allow them to get back into the lead and the Radiant squad used this opening to secure themselves an aegis and some much needed map control too. But the game still hung completely in the balance as both teams begun to pick up key items and avoided major team fights for a while. But when the fight came, VG seemed to be in shambles and after taking down 3 from the Dire line up, Newbee proceeded to drop both the mid and top lane barracks.
With a Divine Rapier on SCCC’s Medusa, Newbee claimed a 40 minute victory in game three of the series and claimed a 2-1 victory, thus securing their spot in the grand finals at the Perfect World Masters minor. For Vici Gaming, their run is not over, as they have a chance to make their way back into the grand finals from the lower bracket finals.
The next match of the day will be the losers bracket series which will see compLexity going up against LGD.Forever Young in an elimination match - where the winner will have a shot at a spot in the grand finals.
