The Dota 2 Singapore Major: Surprising victories & amazing comebacks

After an exciting Wild Card stage and an exhilarating Group Stage, we finally got to our main course of the Playoff Stage at the Singapore Major.

All the best teams in the world would now be involved in an international battle for Dota 2 glory. Team Secret, Invictus Gaming, Evil Geniuses, Virtus Pro and more. All of them gave everything they had, but only one of them could win it all.

Filled with early upsets

Right out of the gate there was a combination of expected results and surprising upsets. Whereas Team Secret and Invictus Gaming lived up to their expectation by sweeping their opponents Thunder Predator and Vici Gaming, Evil Geniuses looked like a whole different team, as opposed to their middling performance in the North-American DPC they looked like a well-oiled machine. A machine that took down Fnatic with ease.

Virtus Pro however seemed to be struck by an opposite curse, as the team looked like a shadow of its former self when it took two quick loses up against PSG.LGD. This caused VP, Fnatic, Thunder Predator and Vici to have to fight through the lower bracket instead.

Resilience and getting back up

Good teams are always able to get back up after taking a big hit. This resilience was very visible for Thunder Predator, Vici Gaming and Virtus Pro. Being knocked down to the lower bracket they picked themselves up, securing convincing victories in their matches up against Aster, Liquid and Quincy Crew. Neon Esports was tasked to face off against the one team that they couldn’t surpass during the SEA DPC, Fnatic. Battle-hardened because of the group stage and stand-in troubles however, they managed to take them out on the Singaporean stage, prolonging their tournament lives to unprecedented highs for the squad of newcomers.

Losing Face

The legendary Team Secret was destined to sweep this major. A prophecy the chinese superteams of PSG.LGD and Invictus Gaming didn’t agree with however. The last european team took an unexpected loss against PSG.LGD, kicking them down to the lower bracket. After narrowly squeezing out a victory against the dark horse of Neon Esports, Team Secret had to face the other Chinese superteam of Invictus Gaming who got knocked down hard by the overperforming Evil Geniuses, and managed to deal with the other dark horse of Thunder Predator.

Once again the chinese style of Dota 2 seemed out of reach for Team Secret, causing the last European team to be sent back home. EG later took down LGD.PSG as well, making it so that the Chinese brothers of IG and PSG.LGD had to fight it out amongst themselves to see who would deserve the rematch up against Evil Geniuses in the Grand Finals. Many sparks were to be seen as IG and PSG.LGD bore down on each other in a thrilling BO3. After a game going over sixty minutes, it was IG who won on the back of Jin “flyfly” Zhiyi’s Phantom Lancer. With PSG.LGD out of the way, IG could finally attempt to find its revenge against Evil Geniuses.

The final battle commences

Getting there however, proved to be very difficult. IG’s first attempt centered around a Naga Siren plus Disruptor draft. Throughout the tournament Abed Azel L. Yusop’s Storm Spirit and Andreas Franck “Cr1t-” Nielsen’s Earth Spirit seemed to be carrying them to victory game after game. IG planned to trap the heroes in a Song plus Static Field combo, to find victory this way. Arteezy’s Leshrac proved to be a massive problem however, as his bkb allowed him to run down all of IG’s heroes, granting EG the first victory. In the second game IG went even more experimental, by picking themselves a Faceless Void, a hero completely out of the meta, and this game two showed exactly why. FlyFly’s Faceless Void got destroyed in lane, and with no way to recover, EG quickly found themselves with another win on the board.

Now with one game away from losing the grand finals, IG needed to chance something. What they did this time was another experimental carry pick, Sven. A pick that at first sight, seemed to fall flat once again. The Sven couldn’t connect with its targets and Zhou “Emo” Yi’s Void Spirit got picked off time and time again, even getting tipped by all of EG’s players everytime he died. EG’s BM though did seem to trigger something in the brains of the IG players. Forty minutes into the game IG suddenly struck back against EG, taking some very decisive teamfights. And as Emo was styling onto the EG players in the later portions of the game, he would leave them a little present by all-chatting a simple “?” after killing Abed, the Chinese superstar showed that he still had spirit. After winning game three a fire seemed to be lit in the IG players hearts. They quickly took down EG in game four with an overfarmed troll warlord. Winning seemed to be the only option.

It all came down to game five in the end. As the draft was complete and the heroes left their fountain, Emo once again showed his confidence. This time expressing the legendary line in all chat “Let’s see who is the real evil genius”.

With their confidence through the roof and godlike coordination from the team with Hu “kaka” Liangzhi’s Lion they made EG look like a second rate team. EG’s blackhole’s being reduced to a famous soundgarden song, and IG’s off meta Specter popping off like crazy, it was eventually inevitable. Invictus Gaming won game five, not only granting the the title of the Singapore Major Champions, but also the title of being the real Evil Genius.

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