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Evil Geniuses tend to play a little cheeky when they have Arteezy on his Terrorblade. But that’s exactly why they’re moving on to the playoffs after eliminating business associates with an insane backdoor throne kill at ESL One Los Angeles Online today
You probably won’t see plays like this at a normal Dota 2 LAN, but it was an incredibly competitive series between two of the best teams in North America to decide the final seeding for the playoffs.
Game one was a quick win for EG. Arteezy, BuLba, and Eric “Ryoya” Dong dominated ba and led their team to an 18-minute victory at 25-3. That set the tone for EG’s early game in the second match, but ba did have a much better draft around an offlane Nature’s Prophet and last pick Morphling.
EG held a lead in the opening minutes, but the two teams began trading blows from about 10 minutes on. Ba took control and held the net worth advantage for most of the game. David “Moo” Hull played out of his mind on Weaver, dealing 50,000 damage and going 11/2/16 to carry his team along with Leon “Nine” Kirilin’s Morphling.
There were several moments where it looked like EG were going to pull away, but one last dominant teamfight in the final minutes gave Fear and his team the last laugh, despite nearly botching the game entirely. This led to a decisive game three, with the losing team being eliminated from the tournament, putting a lot of pressure on the final draft.
EG went safe. They drafted Fly his Winter Wyvern, gave Arteezy his Terrorblade, a hero that only Quincy Crew had been able to best him on, and closed things out with BuLba’s Centaur Warrunner. Meanwhile, ba put faith in Moo once more, handing him Riki while also opting to run with Braxton “Brax” Paulson’s signature Beastmaster.
Ba got off to an early start, grabbing the lead and trying to run with it behind Riki. But EG quickly put together that the Beastmaster wasn’t being used as the focal point of their opponent’s game plan and used that to their advantage. The blows started raining down, with both sides making moves to push the high ground after picking off some heroes, but neither team got more than a few diebacks and tier-three towers.
Around 33 minutes in, ba finally started making some decisive plays after killing the Terrorblade and making a strong move to finish the game. But EG aren’t a new team that you can just count out when up in both kills and net worth.
While Fear and his team were all on EG’s side of the map pushing the high ground, Fly and his squad scouted the top lane and grouped up for a surprise assault on the already-weakened ba base. Moving as one and not even bothering to smoke, EG moved in too quickly for ba to respond. Cr1t stunned the few enemies who teleported in first and let Arteezy melt the throne.
This win means EG will be playing against CR4ZY, a team they swept earlier in the group stage, in the first round of the playoffs tomorrow. That match begins at 11am CT and will decide who will face Quincy Crew in the grand finals.
