Boston Preview: ‘Kiss The Trophy’ Edition
Sure, anything can and will happen in a single elimination tourney. A dark horse will make a strong run and an upset train will be authored by an underdog. But to really win the bragging rights over the Eaglesong, every team will have to run the gauntlet against three teams at Boston — and they won’t go down so easily.
Team OG: Encore
The two-time Major winners return to Valve’s battlefield to defend their crown and dream green once more. While the starting lineup has changed three players since their disappointing finish at TI, the heart of it remains the same — a team built on friendship & hardwork, anchored by the iconic duo in n0tail and Fly.
OG come into Boston after a slightly bittersweet campaign. They made it to the finals of Summit 6 after spanking Cr1t’s EG twice, but were promptly returned the favor by Virtus Pro. OG failed to take a single game off of them in the championship round, bowing out 0–3 to the bears.
The team seemed flabbergasted after a hard-fought game 1 and proceeded to get absolutely man-handled in game 2 and 3 — forfeiting twice under the 25 minute mark. While VP was clearly a level above everyone at the BTS tourney, OG crumbled under the pressure. They scrambled to find an answer mid-series and instead just ended up drafting themselves into a corner. By the five minute mark each time, they were just mentally checked out of the game.
Still, a loss can only be good going into the final tournament of the season, for it gives the team extra motivation to prepare and innovate. Fly brings a good mix of reactive drafting and prepared strategies to the table, and they still remain one of the better Drow Ranger teams in the world. But what truly makes them elite is their personnel.
Jerax is a special talent. While also being one of the best playmaking 4’s in the world, he significantly improves his mid laner’s performance. Along with FATA- in Team Liquid, he brought an almost unusual stability to an otherwise volatile lane. He has this uncanny knack for understanding what his partner exactly needs, and he then makes movements around the map accordingly. Miracle + Cr1t in the previous iteration of OG was another such high-impact duo, but the latter has now taken up a different role within EG.
N0tail has been quietly impressive on the carry role. He’s not your superstar position one akin to Arteezy or Shadow nor is he a teamfight monster like Agressif; rather he plays more of an enabling role for the rest of his team. He understands his role really well and delivers what’s asked of him consistently.
N0tail’s biggest strength is probably his willingness to adopt quickly and downright steal playstyles from other carries — his Phantom Lancer at last year’s Frankfurt Major was eerily similar to how Agressif played it and his solid Juggernaut play recently has Shadow written all over it.
S4 had some minor hiccups in the beginning as the ex-Alliance player was settling into a new role, but he’s been able to transition his lane dominating skills in the offlane nicely. His hero pool seems to be a bit limited, but he can play the traditional heroes just fine. Plus, Fly has the added bonus of having the one of the best Puck/Magnus players on the team and those heroes are increasingly being played in the hard lane.
Ana’s performance, given his time with the new team, has been pretty good; but there are still growing pains. While Jerax can, and will fill in the holes in his game wherever possible, Ana has yet to show a great temperament after falling behind early. The ability to retain composure and find a way back into the game, despite an awful laning start, is pretty much a hallmark of an elite mid laner. Ana has some ways to go in that regard.
It’s on Fly’s (very broad) shoulders to utilize the impressive collection of talent at his disposal, and he is yet to disappoint since the team’s inception. While OG doesn’t exactly come into the tournament with a defending champion’s swagger — these players know how to win at the biggest stage of them all, a quality not many teams at the Major possess.
Don’t be surprised if Dream Green finds its way on the Eaglesong once more.
Virtus Pro: The Need to Evolve
The Russian bears found their groove in the playoffs of the European qualifiers for Boston, and they have not lifted their foot from the accelerator ever since. Their Summit 6 win ends an extremely prolonged LAN title drought for the brand in DotA 2.
Wings are known to play a fast, rotation heavy style that most teams dread playing against. Virtus Pro basically upped the ante on them at the Summit — before innocence and y’ could gank an enemy hero, Solo and Lil would rotate and they would often bring an extra person to these fights. The Russian team dictated the tempo throughout the series, and Wings fell 2–0 in a surprisingly meek showing. The same story repeated itself in the finals as OG couldn’t find an answer to the relentless aggression of the bears.
It’s not like this high action, fight-centric style is anything new; CIS squads have been playing this way for years now. VP stands out because they’ve found a way to harness the advantages of the style without sacrificing patience — a key difference from previous iterations where VP often just tried to brute-force their advantage. They’ve shown a sobering maturity in their play, a willingness to bide their time and switch to a different game plan if the situation calls for it (see: finals game 1 where they failed to establish their usual early lead).
No[o]ne is the focal point of the team’s early game. He’s an extremely strong laner who often wins out unfavorable hero match-ups on the back of his superior mechanical ability. Combine that with the fact VP’s position 3–5 (and even sometimes their carry) are always ready to protect him in case of a gank or back him up in case he goes aggressive, his laning stage goes really well — forcing a huge CS disparity and often taking down enemy’s mid-lane tower. For teams like Wings who rely on that access point so much, No[o]ne’s antics prove to be extremely disruptive.
The team is not one-dimensional in their drafting either — they trounced OG with three different strategies in the finals. Ramzes also has the added benefit of confusing the enemy with an early Slardar/PA/Weaver pick, for Lil can also play those cores as unconventional supports. VP is also, for lack of a better word, honest with their drafting — if an opponent team leaves Shadow Demon in the pool, you bet your ass they will take it and then happily proceed to thrash the enemy.
VP have played their own game throughout this hot streak instead of adopting/reacting to their opponent’s plans (in-game and drafting both). Until now, the team has just been flat out better than others so this rigidity hasn’t been a cause for concern; but their strong showing at the Summit does mean all eyes will be on them going into Boston.
It is slightly reminiscent of the Team Secret run before TI5 when they were absolutely dominating LANs, and were overwhelming favorites going into Key Arena. Instead they crashed out in a disappointing 7–8th place. It was mostly because Secret kept playing with the same style & picks which had worked really well for them previously. When they inevitably got figured out by other teams, they had nothing new to show for it.
CDEC Gaming’s second place finish after their Cinderella run at the same event had a similar reasoning behind it — by studying their past games EG’s then coach Bulba was able to find their weaknesses and PPD exploited them onwards to the Aegis of Champions.
Captains, coaches and their analysts will be poring over VP’s replays and most teams will come prepared with an anti-strat designed specifically for them. If VP become complacent ala Secret and fail to evolve their playstyle, teams will catch up to them without a doubt and they’ll be forced to improvise on the spot.
Hopefully, their newfound maturity lends them enough clairvoyance regarding this matter and the viewers are treated to another round of the Virtus Plow with different strategies. The CIS region has waited for Valve gold for quite long, and this team might be their best shot at it just yet.
Wings Gaming: Still the Favorites
The defending champs will arrive in the City of Champions as the best team in the world.
Summit 6 saw them fall to VP 0–2 and EG 1–2 and finish fourth, but it was clear that the had taken their foot of their pedal for the tournament. The usual intensity in their early rotations was lacking and y’ got out-drafted multiple times. While they still took down Team NP and Digital Chaos in straight sets, they might’ve let the California breeze ease their minds a little too much.
The above paragraph reads like a blatant excuse for their underperformance at the season’s final LAN, and frankly, some of it probably is. But the team has way too positives right now for the title of the favorites to be usurped by anyone else.
What makes Wings so good, besides their heavily-discussed positional prowess, is how they draft and play around their opponent’s weaknesses. y’ has shown time and again that his reactive drafting chops are top-notch and that he’s willing and able to draft experimental lineups that still give his team an advantage before the horn blows.
“DotA becomes very stale if we play the same heroes over and over again.” — y’
This also makes the team quite difficult to prepare for, since there aren’t any obvious picks or patterns of drafting that Wings favors. It either forces the opponent to bust out a prepared strategy that y’ can and will react to accordingly, or to just try to tango with y’ and improvise one hero at a time. Both of them aren’t quite optimal approaches as teams prefer a habit or pattern to exploit and gain an edge.
Faith_bian is also arguably the best offlaner in the world right now. Time and again he’s displayed an exceptional ability to come back from a terrible start and have a noticeable impact with decision making despite being low on resources. The man made an offlane Spirit Breaker look amazing versus NP.
He’s also able to switch to any lane on a whim — most offlaners don’t go anywhere near mid. Faith_bian played an Invoker against EHOME’s mid Old Chicken, and proceeded to dominate the hell out of him.
The team sometimes does slack off and fall behind in the laning stage, before promptly recovering the deficit through their rotations and superior teamfight execution. bLink and Shadow are both pretty good in their roles, but in 1v1s they can be taken advantage of by the absolute best laners.
VP’s style peaks within this early short window that Wings is slightly susceptible and they made full of use it to roll over the Chinese squad at the Summit. y’s drafting during the series also was nothing to write home about. Wings were in the simplest form, caught off-guard by the Russian bears.
The single-elimination playoffs format won’t favor negligence on part of any team, and Wings are no different. The team will no doubt come prepared with anti-strats for teams at the Major and will look to continue their dominance over the international scene.
The Chinese juggernaut looks poised to be the first team to win two consecutive Valve events.
(Or maybe they’ll pull a Manilla once more.. pls no)
Power Rankings: ‘Kiss the Trophy’ Edition —
A rudimentary list of how these teams stacks up against each other going into the Major —
- Wings Gaming
- Virtus Pro
- Team OG
The single-elimination format will lend itself to absolute chaos since there will be no second chance. The Top 4 at the Major might very well look quite different compared to the list above.
