Released from the WG Unity roster only a week ago, Tue Soon 'Ah Fu' Chuan is on trial status at LGD Forever Young and has already produced some great results for the Chinese team.
Once the post Kiev Major Shuffle had been officially announced by Valve, LGD were the first Chinese organization to drop all their players. Both LGD Gaming and LGD Forever Young squads reset their rosters on the 5th of May and started to rebuild for The International 7, and the first team to show new additions to a potential TI roster was LFY. They announced He 'Inflame' Yongzheng being transferred from CDEC Youth to replace Xiao 'Jixing' Zihao in the offlane and, at the same time, they brought in the Malaysian support Tue Soon 'Ah Fu' Chuan. However, in LGD’s official announcement made via their weibo account, the former WG Unity member was declared as initially joining on an 'experimental phase'.
On the following day of the announcement, LFY began playing the regional qualifiers for EPICENTER Moscow 2017 with both Inflame and Ah Fu. They lost the opening series but luckily for them, the EPICENTER qualifiers are held in a double elimination bracket format and the newly put together line-up proved themselves in the lower bracket rounds. They swept through Vici Gaming Potential with a 2-0 score and delivered a big upset by taking down (2-1) Newbee afterwards. In the lower bracket finals, LFY faced off against the ones who sent them in the lower bracket in the first place, VG J and took their revenge with a dominant performance. The series finished in under an hour with a 2-0 score and a strong showing from Ah Fu on Sand King in both games.
Earlier this morning, LFY played the Chinese grand finals qualifiers against their sister team LGD Gaming, who used the same roster they have since January (Ame, Maybe, Old eLeVeN, Yao, Victoria). The first game was a one sided battle in LFY’s favor, who had their new additions playing a Batrider in the offlane and a support Kunkka, both delivering crushing performances once again. The game finished in 32 minutes with a 29 to 5 kill score in LFY’s favor. The second game, however, was much more disputed and at the end of the 35 minutes LGD forced a decisive game three. In the last match of the series LFY went with a four protect one tactic but with a bit of a twist in roles. They summoned the Admiral Kunkka once more for Ah Fu and placed him in the offlane while Inflame got to play a semi jungle/roaming Sand King. With their carry Terrorblade finishing its Eye of the Skadi on top of a Manta Style and Hurricane Pike at the 30 minute mark, and the Mekansm done around the same time on Kunkka, LFY went for the high ground push and claimed their first LAN presence since the Boston Major.
LGD Forever Young’s roster for EPICENTER Moscow 2017 qualifiers:
Du 'Monet' Peng
Xie 'Super' Junhao
He 'Inflame' Yongzheng
Tue Soon 'Ah Fu' Chuan
Leong 'ddc' Fat-meng
LFY is the first team to qualify for EPICENTER 2017, the rest of the regional qualifiers being all in full swing. A total of ten teams (six invited and four qualified) will make the trip to Moscow at the beginning of June to play for a share of the $500,000 prize pool and a potential TI7 direct invite. As of now, OG, Virtus Pro, Evil Geniuses, Team Liquid, and Invictus Gaming have been handed a direct invite to the event. One more invitation is expected to be announced and three more teams to be decided via US, SEA and Europe plus CIS qualifiers.
EPICENTER Moscow 2017 will take place at the VTB Ice Palace from Moscow, Russia in two phases. A group stage counting for the playoffs seeding will be held from June 4th to 7th followed by the main event playoffs from June 9th to 11th.
