After their victories in the Nanyang Cruise Cup qualifiers, iG and iG.V will be finding themselves on a cruise ship next week.
Following the qualification of both iGs, the four teams battling for the RMB300,000 (~$45,000) prize pool have been decided, meaning that the Nanyang Cruise Cup is ready to set sail. The Sapphire Princess (a cruise ship) will depart on the 13th of October and return on the 17th of October. The four teams who will be on-board and participating in the Cruise Cup are Wings Gaming, Newbee, iG.V and iG.
The entire main event on-board the Sapphire Princess will be streamed via satellite and is free to spectate on Dota.TV.
Nanyang Cruise Cup prize pool distribution:
1st place: RMB150,000 (~$22,483)
2nd place: RMB80,000 (~$11,990)
3rd place: RMB50,000 (~$7,494)
4th place: RMB20,000 (~$2,997)
Proving that they deserved an invite to the qualifier's playoffs, iG.V swept their best-of-one bracket, taking an average of 39 minutes to end their games. As for the other qualified team, iG, they had to play through the group stage before entering the playoffs, where they won two close matches against EHOME and LGD.FY.
Yang 'Injuly' Xiao Dong played very well across the four games iG.V won, maintaining a very impressive average kill participation of 91%. Additionally, Injuly performed extremely well on his Batrider, creating space for his two cores by disrupting the enemy, finding many kills on his enemies.
In contrast to Injuly's performance in this qualifier, iG.V's recent performance has not been as good. Despite holding a 57% win rate in official matches last month, IG.V placed last at MDL Autumn and are struggling against teams they have beaten before in the Shanghai Dota 2 Open.
iG experienced a fair share of stomps and close games in their six games played in the bracket. During these games, iG showed a clearly defined comfort zone, frequently picking up one roaming support, one greedy or defensive support, and a carry which can contribute without too many items. In all of iG's three games with Xu 'BurNing' Zhi Lei on Lifestealer, the team was victorious, however, when a Juggernaut or Terrorblade was picked for him, the team lost.
