iG advances into semifinals, eliminates Mouz 2-1
IG is the first team to reach the top four as they eliminated Mouz with the score of 2-1. Next up is the match between VG and Fnatic.
iG vs. Mouz was a back-and-forth series with iG's
Pugna and 
Lycanthrope taking no prisoners in a relentless game 1 set up
by some intelligent 
Earthshaker play keeping iG from falling apart
against Mouz's early aggression. Game 2 saw Mouz going even more
aggressive, and iG bizarrely picking a greedier lineup with a less
secure early game. The absence of the Earthshaker was notable here and
Mouz cruised through iG to even the series. However, in game 3, Earthshaker was back and he brought his friends Pugna and Lycanthrope too.
While the third game was closer than the first one, iG were always in
control, and the above trio were helped out well by excellent playmaking
on the parts of Chuan's 
Rubick and Ferrari_430's 
Storm Spirit
Tiny and Io relocates Fnatic to victory 2-1
VG trip to Germany has been short-lived as they were defeated by Fnatic, 2-1. Coming up next will be a rematch of the DreamLeague finals, a BO3 series between Alliance and Cloud 9
The second series of the day saw Fnatic facing VG. This series bizarrely enough saw Fnatic getting their hands on their favourite
Io + 
Tiny combination in all three games. VG coped badly with the
combo in game 1 and were quickly disposed of. In game two, despite some
difficulties making their early roaming work, VG struck back,
largely on the back of an excellently played 
Tidehunter by rOtK.
Notably, Excalibur's 
Slark felt fairly impotent in this game. In
contrast to this, Excalibur played an excellent 
Brewmaster in game 3 and
with rOtK's Tidehunter banned out early in the draft, Fnatic did not
fall into the same trap again, proving 7ckingMad's point at the the
analyst desk that re-using a strategy that fails is bound to succeed!
Alliance defeats C9 2-0, final match of the day postponed
After that performance in game 2, Alliance defeated Cloud9 in an 80-min match and secured a spot in the semi-finals with a 2-0 score. They will be facing iG in semi-finals in another BO3 match.
The final series of the day saw rivals Alliance and C9 facing off against each other. Game one was pretty brutal, with Alliance drafting a fairly aggressive strategy based around
Chaos Knight and Io gaining momentum and
never dropping it for a second. Unfortunately for C9, this momentum
started building far earlier than expected, and the rest was a matter of
Alliance going through the motions. The second game, however, was to be
an epic battle which will surely go down in the history books. An
extremely long game of cat and mouse - or perhaps rather cat and rat -
was to end very dramatically, when a frustrated C9 team tried to pounce
on a rare opportunity to group up and push into the enemy base (given
the context of constant split-pushing against them). When a few key
Alliance heroes bought back to defend, C9 opted to go all-in, attempting
to ignore Alliance and force down the ancient. Unfortunately for them
they failed and, with that, so did their tournament hopes.
The fourth quarter-final was intended to be played today but was rescheduled to tomorrow morning due to concerns about noise levels being too high getting late into the evening. EG vs. Na'Vi is currently scheduled for 10 30 AM CEST.
Source: ESL One
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