The Chinese regional qualifier for this year’s International has concluded.
Invictus Gaming is the second team from the region to qualify for the world championship, and the fifth team overall to represent China at the event. They join Team Serenity, who successfully qualified from the same tournament yesterday.
Led by TI5 runner-up and veteran captain Fu “Q” Bin, iG dashed all of LGD Forever Young’s hopes in the losers bracket grand finals. The team donning the black and white played methodically and clinically in the two-game series, sweeping LFY in one hour and 25 minutes of in-game time.
They played primarily through their two mechanically-gifted cores Sun “Agressif” Zheng—who played with Q and the rest of CDEC Gaming at TI5—and Lin “Xxs” Jing—who emerged as one of the premier Chinese offlaners last year.
Q drafted Mirana for Agressif in both games, a hero which he piloted quite well in the series. He ended with a score line of 22 kills, six deaths, and 36 assists, showing his rivals that he hasn’t missed a beat these last three years.
Xxs, on the other hand, now plays the mid role for iG as opposed to the offlane position—though his new post obviously did not bother him in the slightest. He played a fantastic Dragon Knight for his team in both maps, and was the star of the show in the first. Xxs clearly has more than just his Sand King up his sleeve, and it will be interesting to see what other heroes he’ll be on at TI8.
This leaves LFY, the third place team from last year’s tournament, completely in the dust this year. A crushingly disappointing result for sure, considering that hotshot talents like Du “Monet” Peng and Tue “Ahfu” Soon Chuan are on their roster. Instead, they will have to cheer for their sister team PSG-LGD Gaming from the sidelines.
