MVP.Phoenix Crashes Out of The Upper Bracket Against Team Liquid
Streaking Korean side MVP.Phoenix stake their perfect record at the Shanghai Majors against Team Liquid who yesterday dispatched Swedish side Alliance in the Upper Brackets. The first Upper Bracket match-up of the day is surely going to be an epic one.
The Game 1 draft started interestingly with MVP.Phoenix picking up a mid Phantom Assassin for Kim “Qo” Seon-yeob, a support Juggernaut for Kim “Febby” Yong-min AND Lone Druid for Lee “Forev” Sang-don while Team Liquid’s draft was way much more standard featuring a Adrian “FATA-“ Trinks Invoker, a Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen Gyrocopter and Ivan “Mind_Control” Borislavov Nature’s Prophet. Team Liquid tried to punish the greedy Mid PA pick of MVP.Phoenix but Qo proved to be too elusive turning around clashes with Blinks and timely evasions. Good rotations from Febby’s Juggernaut and Kim “DuBu” Doo-young’s Ogre Magi guaranteed their PA will survive. Liquid decided to group early as they had the superior early game push and team fight as they took two early towers from the Koreans. The Koreans unorthodox strategy as they start to lose more team fights as the mid game rolls in. MVP.Phoenix is surprisingly forced to defend their high ground at minute 15. The Team Liquid death ball proves too much for the Koreans as they drop their first game at the Majors in 17 minutes.
Team Liquid didn’t want to let up as in the Game 2 draft they quickly picked up an aggressive carry hero in Ursa for MATUMBAMAN and MVP.Phoenix goes more standard. The Koreans take first blood after a well-timed Astral Imprisonment from MP’s Outworld Destroyed into a perfect Febby Mirana Sacred Arrow on MATUMBAMAN. Team Liquid wanted revenge and chaos ensued. It was 4-3 in favor of Team Liquid less than a minute into the game. Team Liquid go into mid game with a good gold advantage. Again the Koreans are forced to play outside of their comfort zone, on the back foot. Team Liquid keeps reading MVP.Phoenix to the letter and they are taking fights left and right as well as uncontested Roshans. As the Europeans look to the take MVP.Phoenix’s first set of barracks, a huge Chronosphere from Forev gives them some much needed breathing room. Unfortunately it was too little, too late for the Koreans as Team Liquid successfully take the Game 2 rout at 43 minutes.
MVP.Phoenix looked completely unstoppable until Team Liquid came along. The Europeans just did everything perfectly, from the draft to the team fights to convincingly win the series, 2-0.
Subscribe to INQUIRER PLUS to get access to The Philippine Daily Inquirer & other 70+ titles, share up to 5 gadgets, listen to the news, download as early as 4am & share articles on social media. Call 896 6000.
