picture courtesy of PGL
It’s been a marvelous day in Manila for NP, who started off with a crushing performance versus Invictus Gaming and eliminated afterwards the crowd favorites, Faceless to claim a spot in the lower bracket finals against Evil Geniuses.
Game One:
NP opened the draft with an Enchantress pick for Kurtis 'Aui_2000' Ling, they secured a good teamfight lineup with a carry Luna and a support Warlock, and at the same time, they had good pickoff potential as well with a mid lane Lina for Adrian 'FATA-' Trinks and an offlane Batrider who proudly showed off his newly introduced Collector’s Cache set. However, the North American team chose to focus objectives and at the six minute mark they were already taking down the first tier one tower from Faceless, followed by a second one a bit before the 10 minute mark.
Not intimidated by NP’s push power, Faceless played the pickoffs game instead. Without any anti-push heroes on their side, Faceless kept NP under control with continuous roaming maneuvers from Daryl Koh 'iceiceice' Pei Xiang who set up about a dozen of kills for Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier on a Sun Strike machine Invoker. Despite claiming the map control from very early stages, NP were not allowed to capitalize on their advantage. Always scattered out from the Roshan pit, and without early BkB’s on their side, they got killed one by one to the point where they couldn’t even defend the base.
Game Two:
One game away from elimination, NP brought back the Jacky 'EternaLEnVy' Mao specialty at the Manila Masters, namely Bristleback, paired with Keeper of the Light. Faceless wanted to keep the same pickoff pressure from game one and let Anucha 'Jabz' Jirawong to play one more Pudge game while iceiceice got the Batrider in the offlane. But their strategy was really hard to execute as NP’s line-p was a very tanky one, Hooks became a true challenge to land and even if Jabz would grab one of the NP heroes, unless it was KotL, NP had all the power to turn any skirmish in their favor. On top of that, Arif 'MSS' Anwar on Legion Commander had a terrific game, winning two duels only six minute into the game and snowballing into a killing machine.
Game one lesson was learnt by NP and this time around they rushed BkB’s on their Bristle and Legion to be able to go for the high ground before Faceless would become a threat and Envy’s team pushed the series into a decisive game three with a dominant victory.
Game Three:
NP kept the momentum rolling in the third and last game of the series. They secured once again the Bristle and the Enchantress for themselves with the first two picks and went with a reactive draft to what Faceless was trying to build. An offlane Night Stalker to counter Jabz’s KotL and a Disruptor to control both Terrorblade and Timbersaw coming out from Faceless proved to be extremely efficient choices. The early game was disastrous for Faceless who lost their TB and WD only a minute after the starting horn to Aui’s Enchantress. In fact, Aui has been extremely disruptive for both Mid and safe lanes of Faceless which gave his team a 2k gold lead five minutes into the game.
Things went from bad to worse for iceiceice’s team who lost all their tier one two towers in less than 20 minutes and found themselves cornered in the base by a very aggressive Envy who was casually shopping his items from the enemy fountain. Faceless admitted defeat after a few futile highground defense attempts and this is where their Manila Masters adventure ends, with a honorable 4th place and $20,000 in winnings.
For NP, they just secured a top three finish and they are heading into the loser bracket finals where Evil Geniuses are waiting for them. The EG vs NP series is scheduled to commence, tomorrow, May 28 at 05:30 CEST.
