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The Summit 9 - Day 2 Group stages - 5 man Black Holes, Pudge Hooks and Famous Last words

Vignesh Raghuram

27o, Jul, 2018

Image Courtesy: BTS


The second day of The Summit 9 is now over with the results recorded and teams starting to settle into the new weird meta.

With all 6 teams now having completed at least three full series in the group stage of The Summit 9, teams have gained a basic understanding of their strengths and weaknesses in the road to The International 8. There is still just one more day of group stage matches for teams to navigate through, while no teams will be eliminated in the group stages, the top 2 will have an advantage starting off in the upper brackets while the bottom 4 will have to navigate through the lower brackets.

Here’s a recap of how the group stage table has taken shape and the madness that was Day 2.

 

 

 

 

The Green Wall have an up and down day

 

OpTic has continuously been rising through the ranks and radar in the last few months. While Let’s Do It came into the tournament with some serious momentum and built up their strength and skill to claim the BTS Summer Cup. The series between these two teams were very evenly matched and competitive. The NA team was able to conquer the ex-Kinguin squad in a 2-0 sweep after some ups and downs with a snowball finish at the end.
 

But their match against VGJ.Storm didn’t go according to plan. VGJ.Storm opened up the series with the first Arc Warden pick of the tournament. The hero was absolutely crucial in leading VGJ.Storm to help them completely decimate OpTic Gaming in 40 minutes. It took another 40 minutes for the VGJ squad to close out the second game, but it was all within their grasp and control for almost the entire match. The 2:0 sweep gave one of the favorites of the event the top place in the Group Stages.
 

 

Fnatic get shutdown

 

Fnatic had a relatively poor start to the event on Day 1. If they were hoping to turn it around on Day 2, they’re gonna be very disappointed. The first match of their first series of the day against VGJ.Storm was a complete stomp for the NA team as their star offlaner Sneyking came out with a 10:3:6 record on Tiny in a stellar performance. The second game of the series started a bit more even with Fnatic even taking the lead at one point. Unable to maintain a firm grasp on the advantage, they dropped their momentum and lead about 27 minutes in, along with the series.

 


In the fourth match of the day, Fnatic took on the constantly improving South American juggernaut that is paiN Gaming. Both teams chose to pick very aggressive early affective heroes, that promised to be a bloodbath.

And that's what happened! For paiN Gaming at least. William "hFn" Medeiros got to take his fabled Slark to the safelane. hFn started snowballing after a few kills on Universe’s Earthshaker. With paiN Gaming's previous MVP Alwi “W33” Omar doing so well in the early game Fnatic had no chance of making a comeback and lost their first game.

paiN Gaming picked up three of the strongest heroes in the meta: Pudge, Zeus, and Oracle, but in the end, it was tavo's signature Enigma who ended up winning their epic 72-minute game 2 against Fnatic with an amazing 5 man Black Hole, pushing Fnatic to the bottom spot of the group stages.
 

 

Evil Geniuses dominate paiN Gaming

 

Game 1 was a stable draft from both sides, with both teams looking solid going into the game. The laning phase was a mixed bag for paiN Gaming, who had to sacrifice tavo and his chosen Riki in the offlane and the Morphling safelane in order to give W33 a good start in the midlane on the Windranger. It did work for them, after the ten-minute mark W33was by far at the top of the networth, but all three of EG's core were next with almost the same level of farm. With a few items under their belt the team from NA grouped up and forced paiN Gaming to try and take team fights they weren't ready for or play split-push with ill-fitting heroes for that role and closed out the game.

In the 2nd Game, paiN got Broodmothered, there’s nothing more we can say about that. W33 said it best: