The defending champions of ESL One Frankfurt 2014 will return to Germany to defend their title and try to claim the prize. Invictus Gaming triumphed over Newbee, 2:0, in the best of three regional grand finals.
The reigning #ESLOne Frankfurt Champions @invgaming are coming back to defend their title! pic.twitter.com/zTnEYOrYu6
— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) April 22, 2015
ESL One qualifiers
Both Invictus Gaming and Newbee headed into the grand finals after convincing victories in the semifinals, crushing their opponents, 2:0. Newbee defeated E-Home, while IG bested LGD.
Game 1
With IG managing to ban one of “Mu” Zhang Pan’s signature heroes, Storm Spirit, and pick one of “Luo” Luo Yinqi’s most successful heroes, Axe, they entered the game comfortably and gained an early lead from Luo’s farm during the laning phase, and the kill on Mu’s Shadow Fiend in mid lane. By six minutes, Luo had picked up his blink dagger and added another death to Mu’s score. While the early and mid game settled down, a pick off at minute 17 from “June” Lin Shiyang on Earth Shaker, on “Ferrari_430” Luo Feichi’s Queen of Pain gave Newbee a little breathing room to move towards evening out the game. With a nice team fight at minute 24, Newbee, gained the lead for the first time. Two minutes later, when a sneaky Roshan Pit fight turned bad for IG. It was a very chaotic game, with both teams throwing kills back and forth and many clutch plays. An amazing “playsense” by IG at minute 48, when a fake Roshan attempt ended in a five man wipe, giving IG the aegis, cheese and the lead they needed to get back. All in all, a very exciting game between the two rivals.
Game 2
The second game started with an almost identical pick from IG, however this time, it was Newbee that had a good early start, gaining a few kills by nine minutes in. As some of these kills were on Lycan, it was exactly what they needed in order to slow down Lycan’s farm, so that they would be able to control him. Although Newbee was successful with their Roshan attempt at minute 12, the Gold went to IG thanks to “BurNIng” Xu Zhilei’s amazing last hit from Lycan’s wolves. This is significant, as the Roshan gold is more important than the aegis in early game. However only minutes later a smoke gank on Lycan at the ancients and the loss of the ancient stack undoing their recent successes. A few pick offs and both teams trying to split push and farm made things quiet for some time. By 25 minutes into the game, things started to get devastatingly bad for Newbee starting with an unsuccessful Roshan attempt losing the fight and aegis followed by another unsuccessful smoke gank gone wrong. IG gained the momentum, the lead and the confidence to play safe and work on getting all of their objectives done. The game was over by 37 minutes.
IG recent LAN run
IG defeated Newbee in the Lower Bracket finals of Red Bull Battle Grounds. They then advanced and crushed LGD to secure their LAN spot.
IG also defeated Newbee in the Lower Brackets semifinals of The Summit 3, 2:0, but went on to loose to HGT, 2:1, only securing themselves the LAN spot through their Maids Cosplay promise in the redemption vote phase.
Invictus Gaming bested LGD in the best of three Upper Bracket finals of the StarLadder StarSeries XII regional qualifiers, securing their placement to attend the LAN finals to be held at Dreamhack Bucharest. IG will play their first round on April 24 at 15 CEST vs. The Alliance.
ESL One
One LAN spot is still open for the winner of the European Qualifiers. Team Empire versus Cloud 9 is to be played after StarSeries Season XII, on April 30, while Na’Vi is waiting in the Lower Brackets.
IG will return to Germany for the $250.000+ prize pool, June 20-21, in Frankfurt, Germany and will join the three invited teams – Team Secret, Evil Geniuses and ViCi Gaming, and the already qualified ones – The Alliance, Virtus.Pro and MY.
Leave a Reply