The Perfect World Masters is rapidly coming to a close. Only four teams remain in the competition, with three being Chinese squads enjoying home-court advantage.
Local favorites LGD.Forever Young in particular survived two elimination series’ in yesterday’s action, knocking out Vega Squadron and Team Secret in the process.
Their one game against Vega could only be described as complete annihilation; in fact, the match lasted just 21 and a half minutes. Leong “ddc” Fat-meng led LFY in kills with Witch Doctor, posting an astounding 10-0 record at the game’s conclusion. For a support hero, that KD ratio is pretty crazy, to say the least.
To top it all off, the final score read 3-22 in favor of LFY, because of course the classic meme (a reference to the infamous matchfixing scandal that happened in the CIS region) had to sneak its way into the game somehow.
LFY’s series against Team Secret was a little closer overall, with both games clocking in at an average of around 40 minutes each. That said, though, the young Chinese team still knocked the ESL One Hamburg finalists out without dropping a map in the process.
They used Tiny to great effect in the series, with the prodigy Du “Monet” Peng posting a collective record of 33 kills and absolutely no deaths. Either LFY have figured something out after Tiny’s most recent changes in Patch 7.06c, or Monet is really just that good.
On the other side of the bracket, the North America-based team CompLexity Gaming began their day by winning a rather close game against Mineski. Mineski’s early gold lead was snatched away from them by coL in the midgame, thanks to a decisive teamfight victory in which they traded David “Moo” Hull’s Io for four of Mineski’s heroes.
From there, their two cores Tiny and Ursa, piloted by the brothers Linus “Limmp” Blomdin and Rasmus “Chessie” Blomdin respectively, brought it home for coL.
The Americans then went up against the Polish Team Kinguin, in a best-of-three series that went the full distance. CompLexity snagged the first game thanks to a stunning performance by Zakari “ZFreek” Freedman, who had a 14-2 record on Enchantress by the game’s end. Amazingly, it was not he who dealt the most damage to Kinguin’s heroes—but rather Limmp on Phantom Lancer with around 23,500 points to his name.
Kinguin struck back in game two, shutting down Limmp’s Gyrocopter hard and holding him to one kill and seven deaths. 17-year-old Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s 710 GPM Razor made sure that coL could not recover from their woes, dealing huge damage to both heroes and structures in the process.
Alas, coL would not be denied a date with LFY in the next round. Game three was a 33-9 demolishing of the Poles, with Limmp getting revenge for the last game by going 7-0 on Gyrocopter. Eye of Skadi in 29 minutes and Butterfly in 35? Not a problem for the Swedish mid laner.
Both LFY and coL seem to be on fire coming out of the elimination matches, and so their games tomorrow will be a true test of both skill and composure. LFY will have the backing of the local crowd, though—a disadvantage that captain Kyle Freedman and the rest of coL will have to deal with.
Before that, however, Vici Gaming and Newbee will fight for the first slot in the grand finals. Expect no quarter to be given by either side, and for sparks to fly as the red hot VG butt heads with the International 7 silver medalists.
