VP, DC, OG and LGD leading the pack in Boston
After two days of competition, Virtus Pro, together with Digital Chaos (DC), LGD Gaming and OG have come out of the gate swinging at Boston, finishing as first seeds of their respective groups.
Both days were opened with upsets as two favorites, Evil Geniuses (EG) and Wings Gaming dropped their series to underdog teams in Complexity and Warrior’s Gaming Unity, respectively.
But the weekend’s clearly uncontested leaders had to be the European team, Virtus Pro (VP). VP entered the tournament as tournament favorites among casters and analysts after their dominating run in The Summit 6 where they swept Wings Gaming and OG.
But their group stage run at this Major was on another level. Facing Newbee in their final group stage game, VP took game 1 in convincing fashion, styling over their Chinese opponents with the now signature Ilya ‘Lil’ Ilyuk’s Weaver support.
https://clips.twitch.tv/dotamajor/LovelyCrowKappaRoss
It was in game 2 however, where VP truly flexed their muscles. Newbee took early control of the game and looked to even out the score and force a decisive game 3. By 30 minutes, Newbee were knocking on the VP base with a fully-fed Dragon Knight by Song ‘Sccc’ Chun.
But just as things looked dire for VP, a tactical split-push led by Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev and Lil take out Newbee’s bottom lane of racks while the rest of VP fended off Newbee, losing none of their barracks and repeling the Chinese away from their base.
In the post-game interview, Lil described their communication during the tense moment:
“In that situation like that, you don’t yell. You should just be patient and just go,” Lil told interviewer SirActionSlacks. “I said, ‘Ramzes they have no TPs they just TP’d mid. They have one creep wave, our backdoor system will system will kick in.’ So we pushed bot and went mid.”
With the games concluding, the bracket has been set. The main event will begin on Thursday, December 8, 2016.
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