Vikin.gg upset OG at ESL One Los Angeles Online

It’s rare to see OG’s Dota 2 team drop a series and even rarer to see them do so by losing two games to a single hero dominating them. But that’s exactly how Vikin.gg secured the upset today at ESL One Los Angeles Online.

Things fell apart quickly despite OG’s dominant performance in game one that saw SumaiL put on an incredible Terrorblade performance. Vikin.gg managed to come back with two strong Alchemist games, however.

OG dropped into game one with a core of Terrorblade, Tidehunter, and a position three Phoenix, which absolutely decimated Vikin.gg in the late game. Indji “Shad” Lub put up a good fight with his Lycan and Tobias “Tobi” Buchner’s Timbersaw dealt some good damage, but they couldn’t hang with the output coming from OG. 

Both sides kept the match competitive, but SumaiL put things away late. In one teamfight, he was able to deal more than 28,000 damage and essentially end any hope Vikin.gg had of coming back. The final battle was hard to follow, but OG managed to sustain through an elongated push into the enemy base to seal the deal after cleaning things up and diving back in. 

With Vikin.gg, most expected OG to play the meta and try to secure a sweep and better their position in the standings. Instead, the team opted to pull out some odd picks like a second pick Riki for SumaiL. Vikin.gg decided to scrap everything but the Snapfire, picking up an Alchemist/Dragon Knight core in hopes of scaling well late in the game. 

The players were eager to fight early. This resulted in a large number of kills in the first 20 minutes, with OG pulling ahead slightly following two massive teamfights around 15 minutes. They followed that up with a strong defense that landed them a dieback on Shad’s Alchemist and opened the door for them to make some moves. 

But despite holding the kill advantage and having that opening, Vikin.gg shrugged it off because they were still farming at a strong pace to win late. The Alchemist became too strong for OG to handle and the timing from every other Vikin.gg player was spectacular, particularly from captain Melchior “Seleri” Hillenkamp. 

Game three saw OG pick a powerful duo in Oracle and Troll Warlord, but they gave up Vikin.gg’s highly-coveted Snapfire and a second-to-last pick Alchemist, which went straight back into the hands of Shad. 

OG was in a much better position to contest Vikin.gg throughout the entire game this time, but the farm scaling still heavily favored the underdogs while Shad built toward another massive late game. Vikin.gg led for most of the game, but even after falling behind, OG kept up the fight. 

It wasn’t until the final minutes when OG overcommitted to a fight and were brought down to just two players. Shad and his team rushed the mid lane and pushed the high ground. The Alchemist made short work of the final towers and then beat down the throne. Ceb and n0tail could do nothing without their cores.

This marks OG’s first dropped series of the entire tournament, while Vikin.gg now improve to 2-1, sitting in third place in the current standings behind the team they just beat. Seleri and his team will have a chance to dethrone Virtus Pro as the top team in Group B when they play at 7am CT on April 10.