This article is brought to you by StatBanana, the best Dota 2 strategy tool.
Alliance looked like one of the strongest Dota 2 teams at the DreamLeague Season 13 Major, but Team Secret just walked right over them in both games today to reach the upper bracket finals and end day three of the main event.
The games came so easily to Secret that Lasse “MATUMBAMAN” Urpalainen even called the series “pretty easy” during the post-series interview.
Right from the start, it was clear that Clement “Puppey” Ivanov had a plan that he wanted to implement when he grabbed Doom for Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg and Winter Wyvern for Yazied “YapzOr” Jaradat. That left Matu free to lane on his own with Monkey King, which completely opened up the map for Secret.
Alliance were banking on Nikolay “Nikobaby” Nikolov building up his Morphling to take on Secret’s core, but Puppey and his team played almost perfectly around them to start the game. While things were even for the first 20 minutes, all of Secret’s players were slowly overtaking their opponents and steadily building up a lead.
Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s Arc Warden was the main damage dealer, but Matu was jumping all around the map and cleaning up kills that normally would’ve gotten away during skirmishes. That mobility paired with the distance of Wyvern ended up being the downfall of Alliance.
Despite the game taking roughly 45 minutes to close out, Alliance didn’t really have a chance to make a comeback once Secret started hitting their tier-three towers. The zoning ability of that Monkey-Wyvern combo was just too much, especially once some of the Alliance heroes were out of the way and Matu was able to jump deep.
Game two looked a little better in terms of what Alliance could offer, but Secret got another high mobility draft to dominate the laning stage and hit the ground running.
Just five minutes into the game, Secret were already racking up the kills, taking out Adrian “Fata” Trinks’s Enchantress twice and then moving on to mow down the rest of his team. That led to an open early game for their lanes and Matu’s second game on Monkey King got off to a great start.
YapzOr and Matu were mainly just taking lanes while Nisha was building up his Dragon Knight for potential late-game fights, which never really happened. Outside of one death in the middle of the game, Alliance couldn’t touch the Knight and Nisha was free to run his opponents down without worrying about the consequences thanks to the fast tempo at which his teammates were playing.
Secret completely neutralized the first pick Puck by drafting to counter it, leaving Linus “Limmp” Blomdin as a complete non-factor for the entire second game. Their ability to control the lanes let them play fast and react to anything Alliance were trying to do.
By the time Secret reached the high ground, they had the ability to poke, take some tier-three towers, and then pull back after Alliance managed to secure a kill. Their positioning was perfect, and even when they had such a massive lead, they didn’t rush into things.
The final game ended at 37-5. YapzOr went 10-0-12 and Matu successfully played a full round of Monkey King, finishing the last match with an 11-1-10 slate.
Secret will now play Vici Gaming in the upper bracket finals of the Major to see which team will be the first to qualify for the grand finals. Meanwhile, Alliance will wait for the winner of TNC Predator and Team Liquid in the lower bracket, which will be decided at 6:30am CT on Jan. 24.
