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China’s group stage at ESL One Los Angeles Online is starting to wind down, with only two matches being played on day four. One of those matches was Vici Gaming eliminating Invictus Gaming, though.
Despite being one of the top teams in the region heading into the event, iG are the first team from any region to be eliminated, finishing in sixth place after losing all four of their series.
Vici has not had an easy time at ESL One LA either, but they do have a decent track record against iG, leading to two strong performances and a clutch final push in game two that led to a 2-0 sweep and securing another day in their bracket.
Though iG was able to get Zhou “Emo” Yi his Storm Spirit in game one, he and Jin “flyfly”‘ Zhiyi were not able to carry their team past the massive wall that was Ori’s Death prophet and Paparazi’s Mars. Vici outplayed iG in pretty much every team fight, only losing more heroes in a single interaction once.
A late-game team wipe led to Vici getting to push freely around 35 minutes into the game, building a massive 20,000 networth advantage before iG could respond, leading to a game one victory.
Game two was much more competitive as iG got off to a hot start, securing 10 kills in 9 minutes and building a decent lead. However, Emo’s Lina and flyfly’s Monkey King were holding the team up, so once one of them went down, the teamfight capabilities of iG crashed, allowing Vici to stay in the game with some smart plays.
Around 15 minutes into the game, Vici was able to start consistently finding kills while iG struggled to do the same. And while most of Vici was looking for fights, Paparazi was building up a massive Slark that no one on iG could touch.
Ultimately, Paparazi’s Slark went 19/0/19, dealing 50,000 hero damage and flattening anything in his path. And even though they held a lead for the entire match, iG couldn’t stop Vici in the final five minutes, which ended up being the final nail in their tournament coffin.
While iG is now out of the running for a playoff spot, Vici will need to defeat EHOME when they play at 1am CT on April 1 if they want to make sure that they are not in danger of being eliminated at the end of the group stage.
