Dota 2 TI6: Most Favorable Team Eliminated in an Unexpected Run

During the second day of the Main Event at the Dota 2 International 2016, we witnessed what is arguably one of the most memorable moments in all of TI6. Top-tier (and fan-favorite) team OG has been knocked out of the running for the championship title. 

OG vs TnC – Game 1

No one ever expected OG, the most favorable team to win TI6, to lose to underdog team TnC from the SEA region. But led by a veteran player Jimmy ‘Demon‘ Ho, TnC outran them with a clean 2-0 win. 

OG somewhat revealed their strategy by first picking Drow Ranger, then a mid lane Medusa and off lane Faceless Void to counter-initiate any gank attempts on their glass cannon carry. TnC drafted a Lifestealer to combo together with the Axe bomb strat to counter OG’s lineup. 

In the early phase of the game, Fly‘s Witch Doctor attempted to kill Eyyou‘s Elder Titan, but was counter-killed for a first blood. After trading kills on both sides, TnC looked solid with their scores — but with OG’s Drow strat they walked away with multiple tower destructions in their favor just after 10 minutes. TnC kept on with their aggressive moves to find kills, but OG dodged fights and bought space for Medusa to farm by split pushing lanes. 

The first team fight broke out around the 14-minute mark when both teams smoked into each other near the Dire side tier 1 bottom lane, where the Drow was caught by an Axe-Lifestealer infest bomb. With that kill, TnC managed to slaughter two more OG support heroes while Medusa and Faceless Void made it out alive.

At around the 16th minute, Drow was again jumped on by Axe, who secured the kill to slow down OG’s lane push. TnC kept on their tempo to find more kills, but the fight near the Roshan pit was a disaster as the Axe-Blink-Berserkers Call failed to secure any kill — resulting in a lost team fight and OG securing the Aegis. From then on, TnC lost map control and more towers fell to OG’s hand.

But the tide has turned 27 minutes into the game, where OG was caught by surprise with an invisible Phantom Lancer infested by Lifestealer, and with a successful Berserker’s Call, TnC secured four kills. At that moment, TnC regained momentum. OG attempted to bounce back into the game with a Roshan attempt. SamH‘s clutch played on his Axe Call, busted down Moon‘s Faceless Void in the Roshan’s pit, and then turned the whole fight into a bloodbath and managed to kill four more OG heroes.

To further cripple OG’s momentum, TnC went for a smoke gank at the 34-minute mark, but they failed to jump into anyone, and this time OG went for a counter smoke to find another opening to start a team fight. During that moment, SamH again caught them by surprise with Raven‘s Lifestealer infest bomb to decapitate four more heroes. With the advantage, TnC took down multiple towers in less than a minute and pushed the top and mid lane to secure more gold in their bank. But TnC showed respect to OG, as they immediately backed off once all OG heroes respawned — leaving both top and mid barracks exposed.

Around the 45-minute mark, both teams were lingering near the Rosh’s pit to find an opportunity to start another team fight. And this time, TnC stormed out at OG support heroes and again sent four of them to their deaths.  After the fight, TnC safely took down Roshan and went for their objective, taking down the mid lane barracks to force buybacks on Miracle’s Medusa to defend the melee barracks. Shortly after, OG’s top barracks were destroyed, and TnC was set to take down the bottom lane.

At 54 minutes, TnC stormed into OG’s defensive position to take down the whole team and forced OG to call GG.

OG vs TnC – Game 2

This time, roles were swapped in the drafting phase. TnC opted the Drow Ranger strat with the strong Vengeful Spirit aura for extra damage. OG answered with a classic Tiny–Io combo combined with more magic burst damage to counter the Drow Ranger line-up. TnC last picked Huskar–Dazzle to counter OG’s magic burst line-up.

Fly showed aggression on his Ogre Magi to slow down the push timing from the Drow line-up. OG won all three lanes and managed to score 7 against 3 on TnC. At 13 minutes, OG went for a smoke gank towards their tier 1 top tower to stop the TnC’s push and killed Drow Ranger with the Tiny toss into the rest of OG’s heroes, then killed additional three more heroes.

At 14 minutes, three TnC heroes smoked to take down Roshan and secure themselves an Aegis, but they were isolated and forced a fight with OG on the way out of the Roshan’s pit near the Radiant jungle. This resulted in three deaths for TnC heroes and a wasted Aegis. 

But then OG overextended their aggression to try and kill the Huskar under the mid tier 2 tower, while TnC was prepared to save Huskar with Dazzle’s Shallow Grave and turned the fight into a four-man Chronosphere, thus killing the Tiny. Two TnC heroes hit the deck, and OG tried to cover their losses by engaging another fight near the Radiant ancient creep camp, but OG lost two more heroes. TnC regained momentum after gaining heaps of gold and experienced from the fight.

Another fight broke out near the Radiant jungle at 21 minutes, and OG attempted to kill Drow. But with SamH clutching on his Faceless Void, TnC caught three OG heroes and soon after crushed four OG heroes while the only survivor, Moon’s Dark Seer, escaped.

At 25 minutes TnC took down Roshan in less than 15 seconds to secure themselves their second Aegis and were in control of the game. There were no notable fights during the Aegis buff duration, and after five minutes it was reclaimed. TnC began to feel the split push pressure from OG and constantly being outmaneuvered. 

At 40 minutes, Miracle‘s Ember Spirit was caught by TnC’s Huskar and Drow while he was split pushing the bot lane to create space for the remainder of the OG squad to claim Roshan and Aegis. Halfway through the Ember’s death timer, TnC managed to pick off two supports heroes to allow them to push OG’s high ground. OG responded with a huge Dark Seer Vacuum-Wall combo with Tiny’s Avalanche and some buybacks to defend their high ground. With a successful defense, OG managed to kill two of TnC’s core heroes and they went on an offensive mode to kill the Huskar — but failed to do so, resulting in Tiny’s death. 

After a couple of minutes,  both teams started to play passively by pushing out lanes to chip some damage on each other’s lane tower to recover the buyback cooldown times. At 46 minutes, Miracle’s Ember was killed in a Chronosphere while pushing the top tier 3 tower. With Ember’s death, TnC took the opportunity to go for a GG push after taking down the mid tier 3 tower to force a buyback on Ember. During this period, Io relocated Tiny to the radiant’s bottom lane to take down a set of barracks. TnC traded with OG by taking down OG’s middle barracks. 

OG claimed their second Aegis at the 50th minute and kept all lanes pushed out to balance out the game to their advantage. TnC went for a smoke gank to rush towards the OG squads to take down Tiny in a Chronosphere, forcing an instant buyback on Tiny. Another fight broke out at 56 minutes when OG’s Tiny tried to take down Huskar, but Faceless Void tossed an isolation Chronosphere to hold the remaining OG squad to take down n0tail‘s Tiny (with no buyback).

A Divine Rapier was purchased by Miracle at 58 minutes to counter the pushing aggression by TnC. In the meantime, TnC went ‘yolo’ mode to go for another GG push at mid lane. Huskar killed Io and SamH dropped another mind-blowing Chronosphere, capturing Tiny and taking him down. Miracle was soon to fall, and OG called GG. Thus they were eliminated from TI6.