Team Secret and Virtus.pro kicked off the first day of Nanyang Championships with a breath-taking series which showcased Team Secret’s ability to handle CIS aggression. The answer was in Puppey’s Disruptor and MiSeRY’s Slardar, as both heroes stopped the aggressive CIS team from retreating and re-entering fights at will. Virtus.pro went back to their relatively poor form in Day 1 of the group stages, messily entering fights with in pairs against an entire team. They eventually could not fight against a fed EternaLEnVy, and in-game 2 especially, EE responded with insane aggression on his part, finishing many fights on less than 100hp and getting at least a double kill.

It seemed as if Virtus.pro was playing right into Puppey’s hands after the game 2 draft. Luckily, as they started off in the Winner’s Bracket, they can still come back tomorrow for a second chance to prove themselves. Their constant Vengeful Spirit carry pick is still unconvincing; Any hero which has utility upon death is definitely not something you want on your damage-dealing carry. Yesterday, VP beat VG down really easily with the carry Venge because they were fighting against low health and squishy carries, with Super’s Alchemist and iceiceice’s Juggernaut not being able to deal with the high nuke damage of Vengeful, Rubick and Ancient Apparition. BurNing tried to deal as much damage as he could, but the fights ended too quickly for him to kill heroes. Against Team Secret, they managed to get Visage-Venge-Rubick, but a Disruptor on Team Secret’s side broke up many nuke combos with either Static Storm or Glimpse, nullifying VP’s nuking capability and thus extending the fights to allow EE’s gyrocopter to do his work.

The crowd on Day 1 was quite surprising, considering it is a normal working day in Singapore. The VIP seats were somewhat filled to around 20% (including local Dota 2 personalities among them), and the bleachers had about 300 people sitting there at around 2PM (Singapore Time).  After the first series, spectators flooded the English casting and analysis desk area, forcing organizers to cordon off the back area to those places. The casters were of course very cordial to the limited number of people who walked backstage to interact with them – I imagine if there were more people, it would have been chaotic. Most of the BTS crew were working on-scene, helping with the production and rotating observer work – Merlini handled the camera for Team Secret vs VP, give him feedback if you want to!

The production setup for this LAN is insane – the huge amount of equipment has to be setup early in the morning and torn down at the end of the day due to the lack of security in Suntec Convention Centre – All the above equipment is transported in and out of the stage area every day. Little wonder, then, there would be plenty of setup hiccups at the start, as they need to reset and re-test the setup every day of the LAN. Every game, casters use the downtime to discuss production with the KeyTV staff, and try to solve the production problems alongside them with help from translators.

The first game of Vici Gaming against EHOME definitely did not disappoint. A quad-core greedy draft by VG – Doom, Shadow Fiend, Juggernaut, Dazzle and Beast Master – had an insane start with the first blood on eleVeN’s Clockwerk by Doom, Dazzle and Juggernaut. Kaka’s Phoenix soon joined the Clockwerk back in the fountain, run down by Juggernaut’s Blade Fury. EHOME hit their mid-game power spike off old chicken’s Queen of Pain and Cty’s Slardar, but Kuku kept getting Doomed in almost every team fight, allowing VG’s cores to run roughshod over the relatively fragile cores of EHOME. old chicken landed great Sonic Waves on VG almost every team-fight, the farm disparity between EHOME’s cores and VG’s cores eventually caught up with EHOME, and after they got wiped by VG in the mid lane 32 minutes in, the game was over for them. VG was already too farmed for EHOME to fight back, and two butterflies on Shadow Fiend and Juggernaut without even a javelin in sight for EHOME cores was the curtain call.

This draft would set the precedent for EHOME’s second drafting stage. In the early game of game 1, EHOME gave up 4 early kills due to their lack of early game utility, clockwerk, phoenix and ancient apparition unable to deter the magic-immune juggernaut from early kills and zone the offlane beastmaster out of XP range. They also could not take advantage of fy’s jungle doom until AA hit level 6, which made EHOME prioritize long-range disables in the Earthshaker and Windranger in-game 2’s draft. EHOME ended up with their favorite Queen of Pain and Slardar, this time with Cty reprising his role as QoP and old chicken with Windranger. eLeVeN ran the Slardar for EHOME on the offlane, going against BurNing and fy, the twin gods of VG. EHOME vs VG game 2, with Slardar(eLeVeN), Earthshaker(kaka), Shadow Demon(LaNm), Queen of Pain(Cty), Windranger(old chicken) against Shadow Fiend(Super), Winter Wyvern(Fenrir), Tusk(iceiceice), Gyrocopter(BurNing) and Disruptor(fy).

Then, disaster struck as iceiceice died in the offlane as Tusk. You could hear the silence after the one EHOME fan shouted “Yes!” after LaNm got first blood together with Cty thanks to iceiceice’s misplay on Tusk. The crowd was hilariously and rightfully biased towards VG, as iceiceice was proof that Singaporean Dota could make it on the international stage. Every kill that VG made was met with celebration, and every EHOME kill and advantage was met with silence. It was quite an experience to realize that even the quiet crowd, at that moment, was cheering for VG without saying anything. Even though the crowd was small, the energy was still there. However, although EHOME had the early game advantage and the spell damage advantage, fy’s disruptor acted the same way Puppey’s did, extending the fights and catching people to allow BurNing’s Gyrocopter to shine. VG still had some positioning errors in the midgame, allowing EHOME to kill 4 of their heroes after iceiceice snowballed into LaNm’s Shadow Demon, overextending himself and Super, who tried to go in after iceiceice.

The kills started rolling in and it looked like EHOME was on the turn, but they were still a little too far behind in towers to start snowballing off that quad-kill. EHOME, a team well-known for their teamfighting poweress, fell behind the better coordinated VG in both games, thus making teamfights all the more difficult for them to execute.

After EHOME failed to capitalize on the kills, VG fixed their positioning problems and started taking fights with Ice Shards and Snowball to zone EHOME out while glimpsing a hero to pick off, forcing EHOME to engage into a BKB Shadow Fiend and Gyrocopter. From that point on, it was textbook Dota as EHOME had not enough farm to contest magic-immune cores with only a Windranger and Slardar against Gyro and Shadow Fiend. VG took game 2, and the crowd went wild when EHOME called gg.

Catch the games over at twitch.tv, and look for updates at Nanyang Championships’s Facebook page!

You can follow me on twitter @TheFreakofnatur, facebook at Chen Yiji and email me at [email protected]. Until next time!

Chen Yiji
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheFreakofnatur

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Tags: DOTA 2, Nanyang, Nanyang Dota 2 Championships Day 1. Nanyang Championships, Valve