After yesterday’s grueling best-of-one elimination matches, the Lower Bracket moves on to the second round where teams will battle in best-of-three games to advance in the MDL Chengdu Major.
EHOME managed to defeat Team Spirit in the first round of the Lower Bracket which set up a match against Team Liquid, who lost to J. Storm during an Upper Bracket matchup.
Game one
Team Liquid gained an early advantage after a well-timed teleport rotation from Michael “miCKe” Vu, who landed a 3-man Split Earth that stopped EHOME’s tower dive.
In a fight between Radiant’s tier one and tier two towers, Liquid’s draft started to come together as they kited Cheng “vt-Faded” Hao’s Sven. EHOME couldn’t lockdown their opponents and lost their cores.
When both teams met at the 26-minute mark, EHOME found difficulty eliminating key targets. Aydin “iNSaNiA” Sarkohi constantly bailed out his cores with clutch Nether Swaps in team fights.
Once vtFaded’s Black King Bar wore off, Team Liquid had their way with the entire EHOME team. With a 33,000 gold lead, Liquid strolled into the Dire base and took down the enemy Throne.
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Game two
The next game proved to be more difficult for EHOME as they lost the laning phase early in game two and just weren’t getting good trades from their rotations.
Team Liquid’s Samuel “Boxi” Svahn dominated the net worth charts, along with his two fellow core heroes.
EHOME tried to answer back, but the team had to spend three buybacks in order to win a team fight against Team Liquid.
As the game progressed, Team Liquid grew their lead and EHOME failed to make counterplays to equalize the game.
The pressure definitely got to EHOME as they continued to drop the ball during crucial team fights. With Team Liquid close to ending the game, both vtFaded and Tang “897” Zhirui jumped at the same time, which set up a perfect Mystic Flare for Tommy “Taiga” Le.
With a 2-0 victory over EHOME, Team Liquid now advances to the third round of the Lower Bracket where they’re set to face the winner of Alliance vs Team Aster.
READ MORE: MDL Chengdu Major Day 4: VG destroys Fighting PandaS 2-0 in the Upper Bracket
