Nothing beats high-level Dota 2 action. The battle between Nigma and Alliance in the third round of the lower bracket in Omega League’s Europe Immortal Division today proved this to be true with a series of tight games.
Game one came down to Nigma’s Ancient surviving an Alliance onslaught at 45 health through a full-team buyback and a relentless push by Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov, eventually taking the series 2-0.
After trading blows in the opening stages of the game, Alliance held a rather commanding lead for most of the first game with their core of Morphling, Storm Spirit, and s4’s legendary Nature’s Prophet. The Swedish squad successfully pushed in and started an assault on Nigma’s base. But even down a hero for a majority of the fight, Nigma held out.
Amer “Miracle-” Al-Barkawi managed to get up two Magnetic Fields during the push, protecting their throne from taking just enough damage to hold out against Alliance’s full power. That let the rest of Nigma get into position and finally start picking off Nikobaby’s support.
Buybacks came out following Nikobaby’s death as he and s4 dove back in to try and take the win. But one hit away from winning the first game, Nigma locked the Morphling down. With everyone but Artsiom “fng” Barshak dead around him, Nikobaby was stunned and killed again by Nigma as they cleaned things up around him.
From there, Nigma marched uncontested to the other side of the map and took the game for themselves.
With their momentum shattered, Alliance looked a little lost trying to counter Miracle’s medusa in game two. He went 12/2/8 in direct competition with Nikobaby’s Anti-Mage to see who could carry their team to victory.
Unfortunately for s4’s team, Nigma seemed to find all of the kills they needed early to build a solid lead and held on despite some rough teamfights to claim the series, eliminating Alliance 2-0.
Nigma now await the loser of Team Secret and OG in the lower bracket finals, with the winner moving into the grand finals. And they are doing all of this without their captain Kuro “KuroKy” Takhasomi, who is recovering from an arm injury.
