There were no textbook wins as teams mostly took advantage of their opponents mistakes instead of making plays of their own. Not even the Chinese matchup between Team DK and Vici Gaming played out as expected, as it was more of a long and bloody brawl than a systematical and thoroughly executed game. We got to witness an on and off five minute long fight around the Roshan along with a Razor equipped with Ethereal Blade in this encounter, which concluded with DK coming out victorious. Still in the first games of the day, it was the Chinese teams that got the best out of this teamfight oriented playstyle that most teams brought to the table, with great coordination and strong individual plays. Especially from VG's Lio "Sylar" Jiajun who excelled as Invoker and Weaver, along with a great Clockwerk coming out from DK's Daryl "iceiceice" Koh. Not to forget the game winning Sacred arrows that came out from Xu "fy" Linsen and Zeng Rong "MMY" Lei who both played an excellent support Mirana. Chai Yee "Mushi" Fung showed why his Kunkka is to be feared, with great mechanics and use of X Marks the Spot, utilising the skill with maximum efficiency.
Recording of the lenghty Roshan fight in VG vs DK. Made by jD.Morantyx
The North American teams showed to be struggling against the international opponents, with both EG and Na'Vi.US dropping their first games. A slightly surprising fact, having in mind that this is the first LAN and non-American tournament overall for Na'Vi.US and the first LAN for EG with their new roster. Na'Vi.US did put up a good fight against VG, with JingJun "Sneyking" Wu playing a great Tiny, keeping his team in the game for a long while. EG had a good run as well against Na'Vi, who managed to come out on top in the hour long game, mostly thanks to catching the American team off guard with a carry Bloodseeker and impressive Tinker managing from Danil "Dendi" Ishutin. Tinker was a flavor favored by the European teams, as Dendi played him in both Na'Vi's games and Fnatic picked him for their standin Excalibur, who wreaked havoc with him in their first game of the day against DK. This 16 year old top MMR player went straight Blink, E-Blade and Dagon 5 in his very first LAN game, a build he finished around 25 minutes in, forcing DK to call GG shortly after.
The second half of day one, likely due to the length of the day starting to affect players, was more one-sided. Natus Vincere US took a solid game against DK into the late game but never truly felt like they were in control. Team DK’s clean, methodical play wore down the Americans as they began making poor plays in the final minutes of the game. The other East vs West match between Evil Geniuses and Vici Gaming also resulted poorly for those boys in blue as Artour "Arteezy" Babaev kept making questionable movements, getting caught out while farming, and even missed an easy kill on Junhao "Super!" Xie due to pure greed during the critical midgame where his Morphling tends to shine.
Looking towards Europe we saw the teams Natus Vincere face up against the very strong looking Fnatic squad. Looking confident, Natus Vincere give up the Tinker to Excalibur with little hesitation and answer in true Na’Vi style with a lot of early game aggression. Danil "Dendi" Ishutin has an absolutely fantastic game on Ember Spirit with an unconventional 2/0/4/1 build by level 8, and continued to ignore Sleight of Fist until level 12. Excalibur, meanwhile, was completely shut down and failed to have his Boots of Travel up before 15 minutes, or even a kill to his name to begin counteracting his seven deaths. Kai "H4nn1" Hanbueckers played fantastically on his Axe and even managed to start swinging the momentum towards Fnatic but in the end Natus Vincere have the tools they needed to secure the win.
As the day wraps up we see a relatively one-sided, All-American match between Natus Vincere US and Evil Geniuses in which the more experienced squad of S A D B O Y S were able to execute a clean game in short order. Unfortunately for the freshly branded Natus Vincere US their day did not improve as they learned exactly what can happen when you let Fnatic have the Tiny + Io combination and ended the first day 0-4. Speaking of Fnatic, in the last game of the night against Evil Geniuses the Europeans drafted a full five hero push strategy which resulted in Evil Geniuses losing a tier three tower before the 20 minute mark. This was just not enough to secure the game as Tinker and Faceless Void got some basic items up and began to take team fight after team fight. The Fnatic push died off in short order and the game devolved for the Europeans from that point onwards. Evil Geniuses snowballed out of their base and out of control to win the last game of day one!
Source: Jooehn - joinDOTA
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