Sina Cup 3 Day 4: DT conquer Chinese giants iG and LGD

Day four of the Sina Cup Supernova Dota 2 Open could perhaps be referred to as the day the giants fell, as Dream Time (DT) defeated two Chinese juggernauts, Invictus Gaming (iG) and LGD, in one night. On the other hand, the road ended for Team CIS after falling to LGD. All matches for the day were best-of-one games where losing meant dropping out of the tournament. Here are the current brackets:

iG versus DT: patience and execution

DT managed to pull off an upset earlier in the tournament by defeating Malaysia’s Team Titan. Of course, they were looking to do the same with their match against iG, a team that would definitely not go down without a difficult fight.

Storm Spirit and Brewmaster are both known to be solo mid heroes. It was Storm Spirit, however, who would mid for iG against the enemy Razor. Brewmaster was sent to bottom as part of a safe lane with Shadow Shaman against the enemy Batrider. Enchantress went into the jungle as Doom went to the top lane against the enemy trilane of Visage, Alchemist, and Morphling.

Both teams were very careful throughout the game and there were little to no attempts to take an early kill until first blood was spilled when Batrider was killed by the Brewmaster at 7:47. The game started to pick up the pace from there and both teams began to move and take towers. At first, DT was losing the team fights, as Morphling always got Doomed by the Doom and got killed before he could even do anything. Because of this, DT started to be more cautious when moving around the map and taking team fights.

At 32:03, DT attempted to take Roshan, which iG contested and eventually took the Aegis. Both teams then started moving as five and moved very carefully across the map. At this point, iG’s plan was to wait for the enemy to initiate, but DT was patient and cautious enough to not take the bait. DT also had a better late game line up than iG and would definitely win a waiting game. This allowed them to continuously roam the map as a team without pressure and while gaining farm, as iG waited in their base and earning nothing.

A team fight broke at 41:45 and saw all of iG’s heroes wiped out without any buybacks. Good initiation from DT prevented iG’s heroes from triggering crucial spells, which made the team fights easier to control for DT until iG eventually called the GG.

The match ended at 46:01 with a score of 17-24 in favor of DT.

LGD versus CIS: a Cinderella story ends here

Although a new team compared to LGD, CIS had become one of the favorites for this tournament. Their bold and unorthodox style not only managed to wow the spectators, but also managed to beat the ‘Chinese dream team’ Team Newbee as well as take a game off Team DK.