Marstv dota 2 og vs secret

MarsTV Dota 2 League Day 2 Roundup: Tiebreakers for days

No matter what happens over the remainder of the tournament, the most interesting event at MarsTV Dota 2 League Winter 2015 will likely be the four-way tie for first place in Group B.

Earth Spirit may continue to have an obscenely high win rate, the qualified teams may continue to flounder under the weight of their invited opponents and China might sustain their current dominance against Western teams. But nothing will top the absurd situation that was the Group B tiebreakers.

While Team Spirit and Mineski were already eliminated from MDL yesterday, the group stage needed to be played out on Day 2 in order for teams to be sorted into their appropriate playoff positions. First place in a group meant a direct ticket to the winner’s semifinals, second and third place would put the teams in the winner’s quarterfinals and fourth place would leave a team fighting for their future in the first round of the loser’s bracket.

Group A – East and West trades

In Group A, OG and Vici Gaming had two one-sided victories against Newbee and Evil Geniuses, respectively.

OG slowly choked Newbee out as N0tail and Cr1t – used the venerable Tiny and Io combo to out farm their opponents by a very wide margin. Any hopes for a Newbee turnaround were dashed extremely quickly in the second game, with OG setting a record for the fastest game at MDL with a final time of 14 minutes and 27 seconds on the back of Miracle – Templar Assassin.

While in VG’s series, they benefited from an uncharacteristically sluggish EG, who were unable to gain control of the map. Most notably, Universe and Arteezy failed to properly utilize Lone Druid in both games, dealing little damage in mid game teamfights. Fortunately for the Americans, they defeated Newbee in the third place tiebreaker for Group A, avoiding a loser’s bracket seeding.

Group B – Tiebreakers, tiebreakers everywhere

In Group B, all of the teams, sans Mineski, had two things in common: They all beat Mineski soundly, and they drew every other series in the group. This resulted in a four-way-tie for first, necessitating a new series of single elimination tiebreakers before the tournament could continue.

Teams were randomly drawn into two best-of-one matches. The winner’s of these matches would play each other for first and second place, while the loser’s would fight for third and fourth. In practice, this meant Team Secret vs. LGD-Gaming and EHOME vs. compLexity.

Unlike the Group A matches, the Group B tiebreakers took far longer. Not content to aggressively split push towers, Secret and LGD farmed for long stretches of time before Sylar’s Morphling defeated EternaLEnVy’s Spectre in a thrilling battle of the carries that took nearly 60 minutes to complete.

Meanwhile, EHOME took the fight to coL’s jungle and slowly chipped away at their ability to farm; coL surrendered after a series of pushes at the middle and bottom Tier 3 towers.

The last tiebreakers were won on the backs of the best two Terrorblade players in the world—Secret’s EternaLEnVy and LGD’s Sylar.

Playoffs – Carrying carries

The EHOME vs. Evil Geniuses match was all about the Morphling. EG called a very early GG after being crushed early on by old eleven’s offlane Faceless Void, who had been involved in ten of EHOME’s 16 kills by the 16-minute mark (which incidentally was the end of the game). Cty’s Morphling had already farmed Treads, Aquila and Linken’s Sphere by that point.

Evil Geniuses took Morphling for themselves in Game 2 while EHOME opted for an early push strategy centered around Drow’s Precision Aura and Chen. EG lost a lane of barracks at just the 12 minute mark. Arteezy’s Morphling had a very rough early game but he came back with a little something called kills. At the 33 minute mark EG had completely turned things around, Arteezy was 12/2/18 and EHOME had to call GG.

Morphling was EHOME’s last pick in Game 3, and it went to Cty once again. EG held the experience lead for most of the game, but EHOME had more kills and more farm and an unfortunate pick off on Universe’s Dark Seer, which did not have buyback. The pick led to a lane of barracks, which led to more kills and finally a win for EHOME, knocking EG into a familiar place — the lower bracket, where they will face compLexity. EHOME will face Vici Gaming in the upper bracket.

Team Secret faced OG next. In their first game, OG last picked Anti-Mage against EternalEnvy’s Wraith King. Secret had several great fights early on but the advantage was solidly in OG’s court thanks to the devastating effect of Mana Burn on Wraith King. Miracle – finished the game with a KDA of 13/0/7 as he melted Secret’s buildings and secured Game 1.

Game 2 gave OG a chance to show EHOME how a Drow strategy against Morphling should work. Much like the earlier game, the Morph team’s high ground was in danger by the 12 minute mark. OG backed up to grab an Aegis for Miracle-‘s Invoker but finished the game in just over 16 minutes. Team Secret will face Newbee in the lower bracket while OG advance to face LGD-Gaming.

Preston Dozsa is a news editor for theScore eSports. You can follow him on Twitter.

Annabelle “Abelle” Fischer is a writer for theScore eSports with a love for Dota 2, birds and cheese. You can follow her on Twitter.