Dota 2 TI6 Main Event Day 1 Recap: Tears Shed, Fan Favorite Teams Eliminated

The Main Event of the Dota 2 International 2016 began with an introductory speech by Valve’s co-founder, Gaben Newell, with his casual polos and thongs.

The opening ceremony continued with a violin performance from Lindsey Stirling and other awesome performances for the audience. After those performances ended, the audience was were given the chance to meet and greet their favorite team players.

Then the real action began. 

The Upper Bracket

OG vs MVP

The first series began with the most favorable team in TI6 — EU team OG going against the chaotic Korean overlords MVP Phoenix. In game 1, OG was leading the early game. Unfortunately, at the 16-minute mark of the game, the Koreans managed to win their first team fight by killing four OG players near the Roshan‘s pit, leaving Miracle as the only lone survivor.

The turning point of the game came around the 27-minute mark, where Miracle was picked off by the whole MVP squad, giving away his Beyond Godlike streak on top of the track gold from the Bounty Hunter. MVP then won another team fight and secured the Aegis of Immortal by killing Roshan. After the fight, Miracle got picked off by the Korean squad, who secured themselves a set of barracks against OG. Soon after, MVP outplayed OG in team fights and took the Game 1 victory in under 40 minutes.

In the second game of the series, OG went for a strong pushing strat with N0tail‘s Terrorblade and a team fight controller on Cr1t’s Naga Siren, while the last pick was reserved for Miracle’s Outworld Devourer. MVP went for a good team fight draft with AOE damages. But most initiation by Forev‘s Faceless Void was crippled by Cr1t’s Naga Song of the Siren and turned the team fights all around. Poor Chronosphere placement by Forev caused MVP unnecessary deaths.

Soon after, MVP played a little defensively, although QO‘s Alchemist managed to farm good items in spite having lost many team fights. Despite the good farm on Alchemist, the other heroes on MVP were not performing as well and lost most of the fights. With the OG’s pushing force, MVP was forced to tap out to continue into a decisive game three.

In the final match-deciding game, MVP picked QO’s signature hero, Phantom Assassin and MP‘s Invoker with an Axe for Forev, backed up by Ogre Magi to provide extra attack and movement speed. OG answered with an anti-push line-up made of Fly‘s Keeper of the Light and Miracle’s Tinker. 

Once Forev’s Axe reached level 6, he started to roam and gank with his teammates. Within five minutes after his rotation, MVP managed to pick up a few OG heroes and Forev earned himself a Blink Dagger. With extreme aggression from MVP, Axe did not die the entire game and often caught 2-3 heroes with Berserker’s Call to win a couple of team fights. MVP managed to control the pace of the game and sent OG to the lower bracket after 30 minutes of an endless bloodbath. 

The Lower Bracket

Secret vs LGD

The Loser Bracket best-of-one (BO1) matches commenced later in the day, with the most anticipated match between the all-star Team Secret, lead by the former TI champion Puppey, against LGD Gaming, lead by another former TI champion Xiao8. Although both teams are considered to be the top tier, most favorable teams before coming into TI, unfortunately, one team had to go home.

Team Secret opted for a greedy farming/pushing strat with Arteezy‘s Alchemist, EternalEnvy‘s Terrorblade, and Bulba‘s Beastmaster — who could demolish towers quickly when coupled with Puppey’s Vengeful Spirit. LGD went with a more balanced draft with heroes such as Ember Spirit, Juggernaut, Mirana and Kunkka. These heroes are capable of clearing creep waves effectively to counter the pushing line-up of Secret. 

LGD’s early game looked promising with Maybe‘s Juggernaut, who dominated his mid lane against Arteezy’s Alchemist. With LGD’s lane advantage, the Chinese squad continued to apply more pressure to all lanes. Alchemist was forced to rotate to another lane to farm up his items and avoided team fights as much as possible. As the game moved into its middle stages, Secret’s support heroes were picked off a couple of times to save the cores from dying to LGD. By 15 minutes, LGD managed to take down all tier towers under their advantage with minimal deaths.

In the mid game, LGD’s high ground push was stalled with Secret’s high ground defense. While Secret gained some momentum to counter push LGD’s creep wave, they managed to claim Roshan’s Aegis. LGD’s strong pushing power simply put Secret to play defensively by sending heroes’ illusions to counter push the lanes.

As the game progressed, both teams slowed down their aggression. Secret somewhat managed to regain their momentum and got their items slowly. Then they kept on defending their high ground while LGD continuously pushed the top lane.

LGD continuously attempted to march their way towards breaking Secret’s high ground, and Secret showed their resilience by having pieliedie‘s Shadow Demon toss defensive disruptions to protect his Secret teammates. After kicking back and forth between two teams, Secret managed to take a few favorable kills, and LDG did not secure the top barracks. 

Towards the end of the match at the 65-minute mark, Puppey set up two kills on LGD supports — but LGD took it as an opportunity to kill both Arteezy and EternalEnvy, then took down the fifth Roshan and stormed through Secret’s defences. Securing both Aegis and Cheese, LGD’s Ember Spirit bought a Divine Rapier and forced one last team fight to isolate Terrorblade and crushed the remaining Secret line-up — thus sending them home.

Na’Vi vs Liquid

The last series of the day ends with another elimination match between two teams. This would be the most emotional match in TI6, where one team would have to say goodbye to their TI6 chances in this BO1 play-off. 

Na’vi‘s Artstyle managed to secure first blood at the beginning of the first game and managed to get more kills after rotating into the bottom lane. By the 10-minute mark, Na’Vi controlled the game with a 5-3 kill score against Liquid. 

The first team fight broke out as Na’Vi aggressively chased down heroes near Radiant tier one and tier two tower mid. Both teams extended themselves by throwing all spells at each other with three deaths on both sides. Despite having the same number of kills, the Bounty Hunter’s track gold gave Liquid the upper hand. The first Aegis was claimed by Na’Vi, but the game got tougher for them as the pace slowed down and Liquid started to go for objectives.

At 27 minutes in, Liquid initiated a team fight with Naga’s Song of Siren to cancel General’s Chronosphere on his Faceless Void. Winning that team fight gave Liquid heaps of gold and map control, and they used this advantage to claim the first set of barracks. However, Na’vi used buybacks to defend their mid lane barracks and used the opportunity to sneak into the Roshan pit. But before Na’Vi could take down Roshan, Liquid stormed into the pit to force another fight and crushed Na’Vi with two deaths.

Soon after, Liquid managed to claim the first set of barracks in the mid lane and constantly killed Na’vi heroes in their base during another team fight. Liquid pushed through the bot lane and claimed another set of barracks. Na’Vi tried to force the last team fight inside the Dire jungle. Unfortunately, Faceless Void was disabled inside his Chronosphere and Naga Siren popped her Song of the Siren to reset the fight and cleaned Na’Vi off the map, forcing them to call GG. 

Liquid kept their hopes alive for now in TI6, but sadly for Na’Vi (the fan favorites), they will be eliminated. 

friendly hug in between Dendi and Kuroky.

The Main Event will continue tomorrow. Stay tuned for more Dota action!