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Titan vs. NewBee

The first game of the series got off to a poor start for Titan, who tried to dual roam with Sandking and Skywrath Mage but were unable to find anything, setting their supports back dearly and leaving them behind during lanes. NewBee leveraged this early lead into a few won teamfights and quickly ran away with the game. Titan did show a moment of resistance around 30 minutes in at mid lane when Ng 'NWP' Wei Poong has just picked up his Black King Bar, but it was too little too late.

　　Titan had a much stronger start to the second game, with NWP taking his first blood and putting the gold towards an early Mekanism, allowing them to win further early fights. However, as NewBee's classic facerush lineup start to come online the momentum slowly turned in favour of the Chinese team, who took the first Barracks of the game at 30 minutes, but leading into the start of Titan's comeback as Joel 'XtiNcT' Chan Zhan Leong finally completed his Blink Dagger on Earthshaker at 35 minutes, which enabled Titan to start winning teamfights. NewBee slowly lost their ability to take teamfights when their double Ravage was down, meaning that after every teamfight Titan were able to gain ground with their buybacks, slowly closing out the game after 55 minutes of play.

　　NewBee pick another facerush lineup and go for a level 1 Roshan, setting themselves up to win the early lanes by a mile. Compounding their advantage they sent Luna, Rubick and Ancient Apparition on the offensive, further picking up the first blood before a minute into the game. As Titan ended up dodging their aggression NewBee went into full push mode, picking off all Tier 1 Towers by 7 minutes in. By 10 minutes NewBee took a second Roshan and with two out of three Tier 2 Towers down they were ready to push Titan's base. By 15 minutes NewBee had taken out two lanes of Barracks and were up 13-0 in kills. Titan called the 'GG' at 18 minutes as their third lane of Barracks were falling, down in kills 2-20.

　　NewBee eliminate Titan from the competition with a 2-1 score.

　　Games to watch: Game 2.

　　

Na`Vi vs. NewBee

Na`Vi went for an odd lineup with a last pick Io who lacked any real combination, planting him mid lane with Ember Spirit. Their lineup also lacked the tools to deal with NewBee's heavy push lineup and their ability to put on early pressure with strong teamfight ultimates. As NewBee racked up tower gold their supports also got considerably ahead of Na`Vi's, picking up Blink Daggers for each of their powerful initiators and helping them run over a Na`Vi who simply had no good way of reacting, instead loosing their base and being run out of the first game by 34 minutes with the kills standing 20-11 in favour of NewBee.

　　While Na`Vi got their hands on an actual combination for Io this time around as they were able to put Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin on Tiny, their every attempt at early aggression against Zhang 'Mu' Pan's mid lane Templar Assassin was turned around on them causing them to lose the lanes hard and leaving them without any damage for the middle portion of the game. This in turn opened it up for Chen 'Hao' Zhihao to be as aggressive as he likes to be on the Weaver, and between them Hao and Mu racked up a 17-0-17 score while NewBee destroyed Na`Vi in 20 minutes, 26-4

　　NewBee make quick work of Na`Vi, 2-0.

　　Games to watch: Both games are too lopsided to recommend.

　　

Invictus Gaming vs. NewBee

iG had the bit stronger lanes, but they were unable to find kills early or to really shut down NewBee. This meant that when NewBee's ultimates came online and they started to take organized fights, they opened up a considerable lead and simply went out of control. Especially Mu on the Puck who had had a very difficult laning phase up against a Lone Druid came alive and made some very impressive plays for a 5/0/5 final score as NewBee routed iG in 16 minutes 13-1.

　　iG threw NewBee a curve ball with their laning, putting Luo 'Ferrari_430' Feichi onto the offlane Pugna which would normally have gone to Jiang 'YYF' Cen. It seemed to work as while NewBee were farming well, iG's rotations were better early on netting them a few early kills which lead into an advantage in early game teamfights. NewBee showed some signs of life as Jiao 'Banana' Wang stole the Chronosphere on his Rubick, helping his team come slightly ahead in a teamfight at mid lane, with iG eventually taking out the game 23-7 in 28 minutes on the back of YYF's 8-1-7 Faceless Void performance.

　　NewBee aggressively turned to shut down iG's early game, expending five wards in the Radiant jungle in order to set back Zeng 'Faith' Hongda on the Enigma and then going for an offensive trilane on top. This early advantage was compounded as an under leveled iG tried to push the bottom Tier 1 and ended up giving away first blood. It took iG until the early mid game to find their opening to get back into the game, with a few critical mistakes by Zhang 'xiao8' Ning on the Faceless Void allowing them to take two teamfights in a row and get some early towers that they desperately needed, only to give some of their lead back minutes later. With NewBee having the far stronger lategame lineup around the Ember Spirit of Hao, iG slowly watched their opening to execute their push strategy close, until the ending was mostly inevitable, with even the occasional teamfight win seeming only a hollow victory in a losing war. The inevitable 'GG' call came after 55 minutes and iG losing their second lane of Barracks.

　　NewBee complete their climb into the upper bracket by defeating iG 2-1.

　　Games to watch: Game 3 is the closest game of this series.

　　

The Main Event

Upper Bracket

With their groupstage victory ViCi Gaming had the right to pick their opponent for the first round of the Upper Bracket, choosing to face today's winning team NewBee. Surprisingly the two have only faced each other twice during 6.81b, with ViCi taking the more recent game during the groupstages of this event. ViCi's decision may instead have been based on their 1-7 record in 8 games against Team DK on 6.81b, as well as the abundance of scouting information gained by watching NewBee play first tiebreakers and then a total of 8 games over three best of three's in the bubble bracket.

　　Meanwhile Evil Geniuses have a close 3-4 record against Team DK since 6.81, including their LAN finals win at The Summit. Team DK however looked far stronger in their match during the groupstages, a game in which DK had the Dire side that EG heavily favoured through this event. In a larger sample things are still wide open, with both teams looking very dangerous when they get in their groove.

　　

Lower Bracket

With Na`Vi's defeat to NewBee they are pitted against Cloud 9 for the first round, in a game that will eliminate one of the two last "European" teams from the competition. Na`Vi has the all time advantage against Cloud 9 with 8-5 as well as winning their groupstage match. Na`Vi have not however looked the strongest and their problems with the kind of split-pushing lineups that Cloud 9 likes to run are well known and should ensure a relatively close match-up between the two teams.

　　Finally after losing to NewBee iG has been placed in the Lower Bracket as well and will face off against their countrymen of LGD. iG has so far been a slight disappointment compared to their strong form before the tournament, but they are still quite favoured against even the more aggressive LGD that has resurfaced over the latter part of this competition. iG's record on 6.81 against LGD is 7-3 as well as 3-0 since 6.81b was applied, including taking their groupstage game. An iG loss would likely be the biggest surprise of the first round match-up's at the main event.

　　Games continue on the 18th of July at 18:00 CEST / 9:00 PDT.