Image courtesy of Red Bull
After two days of intense custom game action, Mineski were crowned champions at the Red Bull Gaming Sphere.
The Red Bull Guardians custom game mode allowed teams to select eight heroes instead of five, with the three additional heroes sitting on the sidelines until called upon by the players. Once selected by a player, the new hero will enter the game with the same items and gold as the previous hero. This allowed for new strategies and an ever evolving meta game at the tournament.
Team Lithium, Rooons and Pain Gaming all stepped up to the plate to try and claim the victory but it was Mineski who took the trophy after overcoming all of their opponents without dropping a single game.
On day one Mineski took on Rooons and were able to 2-0 them, working around Damien ‘Kpii’ Chok’s Enigma and his crazy black holes. Earlier on that day, Lithium were quickly dispatched by a surging performance from Aliwi ‘W33haa’ Omar and the rest of Pain Gaming sending Pain into the upper bracket final along with Mineski. The upper bracket final was a fiercely contested battle that saw back and forth teamfights with hero switch ups in the middle of fights in order to secure any advantage possible. In the end Mineski were able to 2-0 Pain despite their best efforts in game one to make a comeback against the rampaging SEA team. Game two was not as close with Mineski dominating from minute one and closing out the series in just 22 minutes with an unstoppable Huskar and Broodmother combo that allowed Kam 'Moon' Boon Seng to start as the Brood, placing webs in the middle lane and then switch into the Huskar whilst still keeping the free pathing, movement speed and health regen that the webs provide the Brood.
Day two started out with a close 2-1 series between Rooons and Lithium that saw the Brian ‘BSJ’ Canavan led NA team sent home as the first team eliminated from Guardians. Lithium would then go on to meet Pain in a rematch from day one that unfortunately for Lithium ended in the same scoreline, a 2-0 for Pain Gaming. In game one, Pain picked the Huskar this time, due to Lithiums lack of heroes that were able to deal with it. This lead to a very fast game one win for Pain. Game two was slightly closer despite Pain having the seemingly unbeatable Huskar and Brood duo. Lithium picked to try and counter the combo however it wasn’t enough as Pain eventually ran over the European team in 32 minutes.
The grand finals had the potential to go all the way with Pain and Mineski both looking very good going into the best of five series. However it was Mineski who were able to take the title with a very swift 3-0 that took less than two hours overall. Game one started promising for Pain with W33haa playing Templar Assassin in order to secure a fast level 6 and a strong laning phase before switching to Visage and trying to take over the game, a strategy the Brazilians previously succeeded with against Lithium. However Pain’s lack of lane pushing heroes was their downfall as they were split pushed to death and were not able to find objectives in return, Mineski were able to take game one in just 27 minutes. Game two was fiercly contested, with Thiay 'JT-' Jun Wen going crazy on his Terrorblade in the late game in order to pull off the comeback win however it was Kim 'Febby' Yong-Min playing Nyx Assassin that stole the show with a huge Roshan pit play that saw him jump into the pit against all of Pain and steal the Aegis, cheese and refresher shard. In the end, the illusion push was just too much for Pain and they tapped out at 54 minutes. The final game of the series saw the first Faceless Void pick of the tournament, allowing JT- to make a crazy play by dropping the Reaper’s Scythe on one hero in a fight before instantly swapping into the Void and Chronoing to ensure another kill. Mineski took complete control of the game from the laning stage and were able to secure game three and the tournament in just 27 minutes.
This is Mineski’s first LAN victory of the season and heading into ESL One Hamburg, it could be just the confidence boost they need in order to have a good showing at the event, starting on the 23rd October.
