Fnatic end the Winter Tour with just 180 Dota Pro Circuit points after becoming the first team to be eliminated from the Southeast Asia Regional Finals.
Two losses in a row in the double elimination bracket format of the DPC Regional Finals have sent Fnatic back to the drawing board for the next season. On the first day of the competition, they got bested 2-1 by T1, who outmaneuvered them with two drafts that featured both heavy team fight control spells and highly mobile heroes.
Headed into the lower bracket, Fnatic were pitted against Team SMG, who lost on day 1 to BOOM Esports. The latter applied the same strategy on Fnatic as T1 did. They went for Storm Spirit in the mid lane in game one and Queen of Pain in game two to set up a fast tempo. In game one, that meant that there was no time for Fnatic’s mid lane Tinker, nor for their offlane Legion Commander to take the necessary early advantage to have a shot at controlling the match. The game spiralled out of control for Fnatic fairly quickly and not even the split push from Tinker could save them from starting the series on the wrong foot.
For game two, Fnatic used their last pick to counter SMG’s Yeik "MidOne" Nai Zheng Ursa and locked in Venomancer for that. However, they were once again forced to play against a hyper aggressive line-up that didn’t care about the laning stage hard counter. The lanes were stabilized by SMG by forcing a trilane vs trilane, which allowed them to protect the Ursa and play around the Roshan timers to end the game with 50 kills to 23 in their advantage and over 25k gold lead.
While for Fnatic, the Regional Finals battle came to an end in the first round of the lower bracket, SMG will return to action tomorrow, February 13, when they will fight for a spot in the grand finals against the upper bracket finals loser (BOOM Esports
vs
T1).
Southeast Asia Regional Finals bracket
A top two finish in the Regional Finals awards 130 DPC to the runners up and 250 DPC points to the victors. The grand finals are scheduled to take place Sunday, February 13 at 09:00 CET/ 16:00 GMT+8.
headline picture courtesy of PGL
