Six games across Saturday and Sunday for the WePlay! Pushka League and a Dota 2 new patch (7.26c) had an impact across the results.
Read: Summer Game Fest to Host Multiple Game Reveals Over Coming Months
DOTA 2: WePlay! Pushka League Saturday Roundup
Hellraisers (HR) vs VirtusPro.Prodigy (VP.P) – Dota 2 game one went as expected, with an undefeated Hellraisers team, who had beaten a full Virtus.Pro line-up on April 29th, taking it after 36 minutes with all five HR players scoring double-digit assist numbers on 37 kills. Game two saw VP.P surprise HR: 28 to 8 kills in just over 34 minutes, with HR not scoring a kill from the 16-minute mark and VP.P taking complete control. Game three was aa 60-minute slugfest, and well worth a watch – VP.P holding a slim advantage through the first half an hour, before HR hit back and looked like they’d run away with it. 8 deaths on the HR side in of 6 minutes saw VP.P’s Monkey King line-up (with an impressive 23 assist from ‘Wasted’ on Mars) swing the advantage back in their favour, knocking off ‘Michael Jordan’s Phantom Lancer twice at the end of the hour to give VP.P a surprise 2-1 win and HR’s first loss of the tourney.
OG vs OG.Seed – what should’ve been an easy win for the two times TI winners over their development side turned out to be a major upset: after OG easily handled the first game in 33 minutes, OG.Seed came back to take the second behind an insane ‘Chessie’ Queen of Pain performance: 25/1/12 KDA in 34 minutes. Dota 2 Game three saw OG.Seed truly dominate with a full-team performance: no one player had more than ten kills in the 30-minute win but combined for an incredible 91 assists in their 34 kill total to take a second upset for the day.
Alliance vs Ninjas In Pyjamas (NiP) – after two boilovers in the previous rounds, all eyes turned to NiP to see if they could take out a 4-1 Alliance team that’s been performing strongly. It wasn’t to be though, with ‘S4’ on Death Prophet leading a team that combined for 55 assists on 21 kills in 25 minutes in game one. Game two was more of the same, with Alliance never letting NiP find their groove, and the 2-0 came inside of 30 mins.
DOTA 2: WePlay! Pushka League Sunday Roundup
Nigma vs OG – while everyone was looking forward to the marquee match-up, last year’s TI finals teams aren’t performing at TI level: Nigma had lost to both NiP and Liquid with a 1-2 record, and OG having zero wins after 4 rounds, having lost the previous day to their development team. OG came to play, however, restricting Nigma’s line-up across the map – such was OG’s dominance, ‘Miracle-‘ was held to just one kill in the 32-minute loss. Game two was even worse for Nigma – OG managed to rack up an astonishing 105 assist on 35 kills in just 24 minutes for the 2-0. This loss leaves Nigma with almost no chance to make the finals: they would need to beat both group-topping Alliance and second-placed Secret to have any chance of getting there. OG records their first win, but have already been eliminated from finals contention.
Na’Vi vs VirtusPro.Prodigy (VP.P) – VP.P would’ve fancied their chances going into this round after taking out the group-leading Hellraisers the day before, and they didn’t disappoint in another bruising best of 3 against a Na’Vi team that’s been finding some form. Game one saw Na’Vi dominate the majority of the game with a Troll Warlord/Oracle/Pangolier/Skywrath Mage/Kunka line-up, only for VP.P’s Morphling to finally come online and take the win in 44 minutes. Na’Vi hit back in game two with a dominant, 27-minute team performance (26/9/56 team KDA with no player having double digits in kills), setting up the deciding game three. VP.P brought their Phantom Lancer/Pugna combo online early and took another scalp in this tournament and giving themselves a solid shot at the bracket round.
VirtusPro (VP) vs B8 – Tt really seemed like the VP team had somewhere to be, making quick work of a disappointing B8 team 2-0 in 31 and 32 minute wins to rebound from their surprise loss to their development team the day before.
The DOTA 2: WePlay! Pushka League action continues from 1 pm today with B8 taking on VP.P, Liquid lining up against OG.Seed, and Hellraisers taking on TSpirit in the final round of the day.
