Photo courtesy of PGL/PerfectWorld
The third day of the China Supermajor playoffs was a brutal one. Four teams - Evil Geniuses, VGJ.Storm, Mineski, and VGJ.Thunder were sent packing their bags, ending their season with disappointing 9-12th place finishes.
The China Supermajor has really felt like the Majors of years past, decorated with hype, emotionally charged games, nailbiting races for the title and gut-wrenching losses. Infamous was unable to clinch a single victory in their DPC event season. Final Tribe couldn't keep up with the big dogs outside of the EU region. Evil Geniuses new roster debuted only to be shut down rather quickly and with a less than a spectacular introduction.
As the event chugs onward, one spot for TI8 is left to claim and three teams are still hoping to claim that spot.
The opening series of the day was the NA grudge match between the reformed Evil Geniuses and the rising giants, OpTic Gaming. While both games started out relatively even for the first 30 minutes each, it was OpTic that would prevail in the last minutes of the games. They were able to continuously come out ahead in the fights during the first match and capitalize after EG overextended in the second one. Evil Geniuses will have one week to prepare for the open qualifiers for TI8 and show the world their true star potential.
In a reverse sweep, TNC Pro Team knocked VGJ.Storm out of contention and kept their own TI8 invite dreams alive. Although the North American team seemed to take the first game advantage with ease, it was the SEA team that struck hard in the second game, with a full aggressive assault ending in 26 minutes. Their victory tied up the series and in the deciding game took almost one hour to close out. Littered with ups and downs, it was ultimately TNC that maintained the control and slight edge to eventually pull ahead and take the victory thanks in big part to Armel "Armel" Paul Tabios’s Mirana.
The Mineski vs Vici Gaming series was an incredibly long one. Not only did it go to the full three games, but the first match was the longest in the tournament so far - a whopping 88 minutes. It was then followed up with a 43-minute game and then a 52-minute one. As these two teams clashed on and on, the moment that will be remembered most will be the aegis deny by Kam “Moon” Boon right in front of Chai “Mushi” Yee Fung —a moment reminiscent of the TI3 deny by Lee “kYxY” Kong Yang as Mushi's teammate on Orange esports.
The last series of the day between VGJ.Thunder and Newbee was a 2:0 sweep, of two 1 hour long games. Both matches were back and forth with VGJ.Thunder struggling in the very late game to hold on to any advantage or seal the deal.
With VGJ.Thunder eliminated, their fate for TI8 now hinges on what happens for OpTic Gaming and TNC in the next few days.
The action resumes tomorrow, June 7 at 10:00 local time/04:00 CEST with the two upper bracket series before moving to the two lower bracket elimination series.
