Ritmix RDL Recap April 6th, 2013 03:35 GMT Text by TheEmulator Graphics by shiroiusagi

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Event Recap

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Ritmix RDL

Finals Recap

Over the last couple of weeks, the top teams in Western DotA battled it out in the Ritmix Russian Dota 2 League. Though it went under the radar, there was $6000 on the line in this Russian tournament and each team gave it their all to reach the top spot. In the end, Team Dignitas beat Virtus.pro in the finals to walk away with the $4000 first place prize.



Since many of you may have missed this tourney, for this recap we had our new guest writer, Vyk, give us a



In conclusion, congratulations to Team Dignitas on their win, and we look forward to bringing you coverage of more of these regional tournaments in the weeks and months to come. Enjoy! (Oh, also,



Finals Recap By Vyk





Brackets Courtesy of Liquipedia



Virtus.pro 2-1 Fnatic.EU



What would in retrospect prove to be one of Santa’s last series in the Virtus.pro lineup pitted them against one of the toughest opponents in the invitational: Fnatic, who have nonetheless had some trouble breaking Russian teams.



Game 1



In every game of the series, Fnatic bans Airman’s legendary Gyrocopter first. This time, they pick up Wisp/Chaos Knight and add a Broodmother for the fifth pick. Virtus.pro’s approach, meanwhile, is a carry Vengeful Spirit. It isn’t the right choice. KSi’s Lone Druid struggles against the Wisp/CK dual mid and the aggressive trilane gets some farm for Venge but not nearly enough to fend off the snowballing CK or punish the pushing Brood top. GG in sixteen minutes.



Game 2



This time VP bans the Wisp. Fnatic finds themselves short on hero options to deal with the illusions of PL and so pivot to more of an all-in early push strat featuring Chen and Leshrac. However, they cannot actually find the opportunity to push, hemmed in by a surprisingly effective pure-roaming Alchemist from KSi generating tons of room for PL to get unmanageably big.



Game 3



Fnatic plays out a scrappy game that they arguably lost at the draft stage. They pick up Shadow Demon and Dark Seer as their first two, but VP calls their bluff anyway and puts Airman on PL again. Fnatic counters with anti-push from ES and Tinker and a N0tail Meepo to taste, but this plays right into VP’s inescapable chasing lineup of Blink Dagger Nyx, Clockwerk, and Nature’s Prophet. They play keep-away as much as they can, persisting even beyond the point of no return after some BM directed towards N0tail from NS, but TMW’s Nyx gets the action VP needs to once again cultivate inevitability on PL surprisingly early. Fnatic finds themselves the first team in the losers’ bracket.







Empire 2-0 Mousesports



With Black not able to make the series, Mouz had the unenviable task of having stand-ins fill in their critical #1 role against the V-God fortified Empire.



Game 1



Kuroky stands in for Black's Anti-Mage and Mouz puts FATA on what is, at this point, an exotic solo mid Juggernaut. Mouz's weird laning puts them behind early, especially Alex's hardlane KOTL. They do a great job of trading towers pound for pound - Kuro even manages to get Empire's top melee rax in exchange for Mouz's middle barracks - but when the rubber hits the road BlowYourBrain's Gyro is slightly too big and Empire roll over the ancient.



Game 2



Mouz runs a fairly standard Lone Druid-centric lineup while Empire goes for Big Teamfight Damage with Dream Coil setup for Illuminates + Requiem of Souls. Scandal struggles early in the hard lane as Clockwerk but in general the game proceeds pugilistically, with Vigoss's Puck carrying a lot of water even as BlowYourBrain’s SF struggles early. The game remains extremely tight for almost half an hour, with 1 kill and less than 1000 gold earned separating the two teams for long stretches, but at 28 minutes a fresh Manta added onto his BKB gives BlowYourBrain the damage necessary to wipe Mouz in exchange for just his own life, which pries the lid off the match. Seizing the moment, Empire picks up more kills, Rosh, more kills, a set of rax, more kills, mega creeps... and earn advancement to the winners' semifinals.







No Tidehunter 2-0 Team Liquid



No Tidehunter originally snapped a comically long winning streak for Liquid with a win in the Raidcall D2L a couple weeks prior. Did they have another in them?



Game 1



NTH confidently responds to Liquid's Riki with an AM for Loda, clearly unafraid of the so-called "hard counter." Liquid farms up a Leshrac in the middle quickly in addition to Riki on the safelane, but while TC's Bloodstone comes very quickly indeed, the game is too passive for him to accumulate all that many charges, so all that farm remains arguably wasted. A 5v5 engagement at Roshan tips dramatically in NTH's favour when a Furion ult + two Illuminates blow up in Liquid's faces, exchanging 5 kills for just Loda's Aegis. The game becomes academic thereafter.



Game 2



Lone Druid and Chen picks in the first phase signal some urgency from No Tidehunter that they double with Shadow Shaman and Dragon Knight. Liquid seems unconcerned about the potentially overwhelming amounts of push and draft no special countermeasures. They rack up a few kills, but by 21 minutes NTH have every outer tower, a 10k gold earned advantage, and the confidence to go high ground before Korok can muster much of a counterargument. Liquid disregard the all-in push to their detriment and find themselves in the lower bracket.







(LB) Team Liquid 2-1 Fnatic.EU



Two hotly tipped Western teams find themselves surprisingly in the lower bracket of the RDL not long after their epic TPL fixture. Once again, Synderen is standing in for Fnatic.



Game 1



For the second time in this tournament, Juggernaut goes mid. TC's Anti-Mage cops a couple of deaths on the way to his Battlefury, but skipping tier 1 boots still lets him hit it very quickly. Fnatic, feeling the heat, unleashes the Juggerpush, earning them 3 towers, some trades, and a Rosh, but they still cannot find map control over a slippery Liquid team despite having nearly full map vision. Consequently, TC has 300 last hits in a half hour, eventually going high ground a few minutes later with Heart, Battlefury, Basher, and Manta.



Game 2



Liquid doubles down on the AM while Fnatic looks to go over the top. TC hits Battlefury at 12:00 this time, but Hanni's strong Blink timing on Magnus puts a lot of pressure on Liquid. The game stays close well into its thirtieth minute but Fnatic is more comfortable letting the game wear on late. After a big missed smoke gank from Liquid an awkward fight breaks out near the Dire secret shop where Korok's QOP dies in an RP before contributing much of anything. Liquid lacks the buybacks to stop the bot and top raxes falling in short order.



Game 3



At first it seems as though Korok's Storm Spirit is going to be suppressed effectively by Fnatic mid while Era farms hard on N'aix. However Fnatic doesn't develop a clear advantage and Hanni can't seem to generate the big RPs even with a Blink. In a relatively passive and yet fairly sloppy game, both teams lose core heroes all over, but at 24 minutes Liquid pushes out of their base in a flash and punish Fnatic's aggression with 3 pickoffs and two towers in one fell swoop. After this, Fnatic's momentum is stopped dead, and Liquid seizes an increasing level advantage on their way to 14 straight kills and the tap-out that makes Fnatic the first team eliminated from the tournament.







Dignitas 2-0 RoX.KIS



The Russian team with the sometimes seemingly-random roster against the North American team with the sometimes seemingly-random draft strategies; with both teams fielding a standin, who advances?



Game 1



Dignitas puts Lycan in the friendly jungle and Enigma in the enemy jungle. Initially, this all just seems too weird, and Solo dominates as TA in mid against Gyrocopter, but things turn around quickly after Way2Sexy critically bails out both Sneyking and Universe with a great Black Hole that causes a 4 for 0 trade. RoX finds their supports 3-4 levels behind Dignitas's greedy XP-maximizing strategy and lack the muscle to stop the Tier 3 push when it comes.



Game 2



Things go poorly immediately for RoX in Game 2. Sneyking wins mid and Aui absolutely devastates the Radiant safe lane, going 4-1 and downing both outer towers quickly. RoX is never remotely in the fights and indeed can't afford to take any once Warlock hits a fast Aghanim's. BzzIsPerfect farms his heart out on AM to rocket to the top of net worth and levels but it isn't enough when Warlock finishes Refresher inside of 30 and Dignitas rolls over the interior base with the power of Double Double Demon Doublified.







(WB Semis) Virtus.pro 2-1 No Tidehunter



VP, now avec ARS-ART, looks for the strong support to give them the edge they need against a team that they often struggle to overcome in the early game.



Game 1



Virtus Pro doesn’t go Wisp/CK nearly as often as some other Russian teams but they do so here. S4 on TA brings TMW’s mid Beastmaster down to critical levels several times, but no kill is forthcoming. Meanwhile, the CK/Wisp train is pulling into the station. NTH stays on the aggressive for some time but Virtus Pro applies too much pressure too early - well before Loda hits armlet - and NTH doesn’t have the tools to respond.



Game 2



VP scores a nearly identical team composition to NTH’s Game 1 with a Brewmaster in place of the TA, while NTH takes a QOP for S4 and their pocket Phantom Assassin for Loda. Akke’s early courier kill stymies TMW’s bottle crow. With three early towers and total map control via wards, NTH is able to gank VP everywhere on the map, picking up a passel of kills for S4 and Akke and all the time in the world for Loda to build up. Akke ends up 7-0-9 on support Lina as NTH convincingly takes the game.



Game 3



No Tidehunter drafts Wisp again but VP pounces with immediate killing intent from the first minute with their Rubick/Lina/Weaver trilane. Again and again, NTH attempts to commit resources to the bottom lane to tip the 3v3 their way, but the situation just keeps getting worse as everyone sent down to the lane dies immediately. By the 13 minute mark Airman’s Weaver is 15-0-8 and NTH, reeling, taps out, relegated to the lower bracket.







(LB) Mousesports 2-1 RoX.KIS



Mouz and RoX both look to stay alive after being sent down 2-0.



Game 1



Alex’s KOTL gets caught out of position, giving a quick first blood to RoX, and they quickly add two more kills. When Black cops a sloppy death as well, the early situation for Mouz looks a little grim. They earn kills here and there, but Solo’s Nyx runs rampant over Mouz and at 26 minutes they’re down two melee rax and 18 deaths.



Game 2



This time Mouz is the one putting pressure on early, with qojqva and FATA grabbing some early kills. Solo once again does work - his Magnus steals a Roshan kill and Aegis, turning around a difficult situation for RoX, but Black’s Shadowblade Alchemist is rampaging across the map. RoX ends up hemmed into their base and down a set of rax for ages, but the Rapier/Manta on Bzz’s Gyro, plus Empower plus Vengeance Aura, makes delivering the deathblow difficult for Mouz, even when up 30k gold. After a 20 minute stalemate Mouz daringly goes for megas, but RoX is able to just barely hold them off. Finally, at 49 minutes and up 50,000 gold, Mouz kills Bzz, claiming the Rapier and the win.



Game 3



FATA Batrider vs Solo Nyx in the middle defines the early action of the game. Mouz leaps to an early advantage. RoX tries to turn it around with a very tenacious pursuit at Radiant Tier 1 bottom with Lifestealer and Medallion Weaver, but Mouz immediately counterattacks and clear out the core heroes. The game can still tilt either way, but RoX is forced to forfeit due to another tournament engagement (EMS), ending their run in this one somewhat ignominiously. This forfeit is eventually overturned and the teams continue on another day, but RoX falls in short order







(LB) No Tidehunter 2-1 Mousesports



Two European juggernauts both fight to keep their hopes in the home of the Russians alive.



Game 1



Rubick somehow sneaks to Mouz’s 4th pick with a Magnus on the field, and their Nature’s Prophet + Lifestealer + Storm seem to promise bombs ahoy. But Mouz struggles to gank early, especially on S4, who rockets to 4-0-2 with a courier snipe as Magnus. Relegated to using Lifestealer bombs to farm, Mouz delays the inevitable for a small stretch but the inability to get even a single easy kill with their gankers dooms them.



Game 2



NTH poaches the Lifestealer and adds a Gyro, while Mouz takes an Alchemist screening for a Morphling! While the support Alchemist isn’t that inspiring early, Mouz wins every lane, avoiding substantially putting the Morphling to the test as they more or less just stomp, led by near-perfect FATA Puck play. Once Morphling can kill large swaths of their team, NTH calls GG.



Game 3



Mouz clearly angles for the KOTL+PL early and NTH surprisingly lets them freely take it. Once again a #1 pick is followed by another #1 pick, this time with NTH picking DK and then... Dooooom for Loda! Akke Chen keeps too much from happening other than constant Mouz towers falling, and Mouz requires too much legwork to gank even DK. Aside from PL, Mouz are primarily bursty magic damage, and NTH gets the right item pickups - Orchid, BKB, Pipe, Heart, Blademail - to prevent themselves from getting popped, overwhelming Mouz before Black’s PL can totally take over.







Team Dignitas 2-1 Empire



Empire, which has a pretty good lifetime record at Dignitas, wants to send the Americans down into the lower bracket ASAP to advance to the Winners’ Finals themselves. Dignitas, with Sneyking in tow, wants to upend that expected result.



Game 1



Empire drafts the time-honoured worse-than-it-sounds combo of SD/Kunkka and somehow feed 3 kills to Fogged’s Jakiro early, although their farm is ahead and across more heroes, particularly after a pair of good fights at Radiant tier 1 top and Dire tier 1 mid. Dignitas can’t catch a break until a great fight in bot lane that gives Fear, standing in for Aui, an ultra kill and Aegis. They once again dominate Empire in the next fight, seizing the advantage and a pair of rax, and at this point Fear and Universe are both scarier than anything Empire can field.



Game 2



Dignitas once again grabs Warlock, while Empire drafts Clinkz for what feels like the first time A.F. (After Funn1k). BlowYourBrain confidently dives the tower while Scandal bullies Universe bot, and Fogged can’t find his farm top as Warlock, choosing to give Sneyking’s Luna the mid lane. In fact, Empire basically have the run of the map early, and brutally sabotage an early Roshan attempt from Dignitas to bring it to 16-4 and the early GG.



Game 3



Dignitas runs the unconventional Shadow Shaman and Earthshaker to ensure that Universe’s Gyro can secure trilane kills, and indeed two are obtained lightning-fast on Scandal’s Bounty Hunter. At 11 minutes Universe is 4-0-4 with 100% teamfight participation. at 15 minutes he’s 6-0-6 and Sneyking is 5-0-5. Then it became 8-0-6 (on his way to 14-0-14) and 6-0-7. Empire continue to prey at the weak links by kiling off Fogged and way2sexy in every fight, but the gold and XP deficit to Dignitas’ core heroes grows to staggering and concede-inducing proportions.







(LB) Team Liquid 2-1 Empire



Sent down to the Losers’ Bracket the previous day by a Dignitas packing two standins, Empire looked for redemption against Liquid as they continued through the North American gauntlet.



Game 1



Korok on Puck vs Vigoss on QOP in the middle promised to be the headlining matchup of the game, and indeed some intriguing cat and mouse is played out, with Vigoss eventually drawing first blood with the help of some rotation. The situation becomes somewhat more critical after Vigoss seizes a triple kill bottom. Liquid finds itself facing down an improbable 10k gold deficit at 15 minutes in, and although ixmike picks off a Roshan kill from long range they don’t get the attendant Aegis. While Empire looks substantially less than impeccable and feed a courier unnecessarily, they do pick up the first rax at 32 minutes... but Liquid is closing the gap and the game can still tilt after a fight at Radiant top rax at 39 minutes goes calamitously for Empire. Suddenly, after an entire game on the offensive, the Russians are on the back foot completely, and they’re unable to regain a toehold before Liquid pushes through the mid rax and the game.



Game 2



Liquid secures an early pick of Storm Spirit this time to try to tip the mid matchup more in their favour, but Empire sends the game for a loop with a late Treant Protector pick - their second in as many days. Liquid appears to have the advantage in the 3v3 lane, but the subtleties of Treant make themselves known in slow farm for TC’s Lifestealer and confident diving from Vigoss’s Living Armor-empowered Queen of Pain. Once again, QoP is dominant early, and Empire isn’t letting another game slip away; they start pushing very aggressively, even before any Necronomicons hit the field, and eventually they get the fight they are looking for to secure the bottom rax. Liquid still has an opportunity to stall Empire’s progress, but a failed defense of the base leads to them down 2 sets of rax, and a buyback-festooned teamfight takes Empire the rest of the way to megas.



Game 3



Empire drafts a surprise Disruptor against a team with no blinkers, possibly as an unorthodox Magnus counter attempt. After fluff’s hardlane Lion somehow claims first blood in the middle in exchange for Liquid’s courier, a series of major skirmishes break out - skirmishes that Korok’s Magnus is always on the correct side of. Empire finds the situation in mid untenable, continually rotating players there only to find them swept away. Silent can’t get anything done on Disruptor at all, ending the game 0-4-0 with most of his teammates hardly better.







(LB) No Tidehunter 2-0 Team Liquid



So far all of Liquid’s series have gone the full length with some tight games - will they be able to sneak past No Tidehunter, a team that can win very big when it wins?



Game 1



Liquid picks Dota’s current bete noire combo - KOTL+PL - and back it up by trying to forestall high-gank approaches from NTH with Riki and NS bans. In fact, NTH don’t seem to have a traditional pairing for their Wisp at all - Gyro is the closest candidate. All seems according to plan for Liquid at first until the team trades 4 for Loda, all while Bulldog farms up his Nature’s Prophet towards a Shadowblade + Sheep. Liquid finds themselves under immense split-push pressure, the possibility of getting blown up by globals, and an immense farm deficit. Unable to find any advantage to rely upon at all, they suit up for game 2.



Game 2



Continuing the Loda tradition of quirky carries, NTH picks up Spectre, while Liquid puts TC on Void. Their XP and gold more or less track each other for a while, but egm’s Nyx and s4’s Windrunner are pulling ahead on levels, and ensuing engagements go worse and worse for Liquid as the team is unable to respond to Loda with much of anything that’ll stick through stuns, Cogs, and Illuminates. They tap out and are sent out of the tournament, with No Tidehunter advancing to the lower bracket finals.







(WB Finals) Dignitas 2-1 Virtus.pro



Virtus.Pro, a team whose consistency seems to have been undented by a dramatic and controversial roster change, goes up against Dignitas, a team not known for consistency of its results but a very high ceiling.



Game 1



Dignitas seeks to pierce the top tier 2 with their Shadow Shaman, Visage, Gyrocopter spearhead but get completely sideswiped by TMW’s Magnus for a 4-1 trade. A similar outcome occurs when Dignitas attempts to push bot tier 1. After that they don’t dare to push, settling for a Roshan and a defensive posture. They try one more time at Radiant tier 2 bottom, but once again fail, this time not even getting Roshan. All of their barracks fall and they tap out.



Game 2



Dignitas drops the Visage but keeps Rhasta, this time adding a QoP to give them the last clump of damage they were missing in early engagements. Even with Aui dropping twice, Sneyking is getting enough kills that Dignitas leaps to a dramatic lead. VP manages to grab a Rosh in the middle of a heated teamfight, but Sneyking is getting bigger and bigger, reaching 16-2 at one point. VP holds on admirably, chasing individual players with KSi’s bear and Airman N’aix when they can, but Dignitas eventually decides they’ve had enough of pussyfooting and push to the throne.



Game 3



Ars-Art grabs FB with a dive beyond Tier 1 on his VS, but Dignitas methodically strikes back with attacks every few minutes while developing Gyrocopter and Puck. Still, VP initially gets the better of engagements with strong play from KSi’s Bat and TMW’s QoP, leading 14-5 at 18 minutes. When they add Roshan to their bounty things seem quite bleak for Dignitas, but VP dramatically fails to break the base two times in a row. Even with a substantial lead they become gunshy, which gives Universe just the time he needs to get to Shadowblade, BKB, Daedalus and an Aegis on his Gyrocopter. VP is suddenly caught flat-footed, unable to overcome the sudden Gyro power, and lose their first set of rax, followed by the second and third, and the winners’ bracket final.







(LB Finals) Virtus.pro 2-1 No Tidehunter



The team that out-aggroes the Russians and the least aggro Russian team meet for the second time in the tournament, VP on the way down and NTH on the way back up.



Game 1



VP drafts a surprisingly Lodaish Spectre and NTH spends the early game making them pay for it, piling on the pressure with a WR/PL/KOTL trilane and Bulldog Prophet support. But VP somehow weathers the storm and put NTH on the back foot all through the first night, despite S4's Nightstalker. Even with Airman way behind Loda, and going the extremely old-school Vanguard/Radiance build, VP takes fight after fight on the back of Nyx Assassin, with a big one at Rosh. Yet NTH is ready too. Loda, rocketing towards 600 last hits, pushes multiple lanes way, way in, while Bulldog’s Necro 3 helps too. VP manages to turn away Loda after one set of rax is downed, but NTH grabs Rosh and goes in again, with PL illusions eventually disposing of the second set of rax. VP’s last ditch counterpush is just a bit short, with Airman lacking the muscle to punch through on highground even with multiple KSi Illusory Walls to help.



Game 2



VP thinks about the KOTL/PL and decides against it, taking Lifestealer, while NTH deploys their Riki/Io pocket picks with Akke on the support Gyro. There’s some back and forth but at around 13 or 14 minutes VP suddenly realises that NTH actually have no counterpush to speak of, pushing all the way down the bottom lane and securing a rax at 16 minutes. From there, even with Loda assassinating players left and right, KSi’s panda bear leads VP on an unstoppable pushing crusade.



Game 3



In their matchups, NTH usually attempts to beat down VP with ganks and aggression before VP can get a word in edgewise, but in this game it’s VP picking up the Io/CK and No Tidehunter hunkering down with a Faceless Void. NTH starts with a robust XP lead but attempt to turn it into counter-aggression too early, losing Void three times and the rest of the team intermittently. Now NTH are behind the ball, with not only CK doing well but a surprisingly high level Ars-Art Jakiro with no deaths and an early Force Staff landing Ice Paths left and right. Void is huge - BKB, Mask of Madness, Butterfly, Maelstrom - but not huge enough to prevent losing a rax, or an absolutely perfect Macropyre across the Roshan to Ancient stairs killing three. Loda buys back to prevent the Rosh kill, but ends up on the rune high ground after an errant Reality Rift, where once again Jakiro's slows and Ice Paths make him lose the duel. With no more buybacks for NTH, that’s all she wrote for their sets of barracks and their hope of making it to the grand finals.







(Grand Finals) Dignitas 3-1 Virtus.pro



Still unsure about when Sneyking would return to full-time duty, Dignitas here is looking to close the door on Virtus.pro once again and take the title.



Game 1



In game one, Dignitas poaches Airman’s Gyro and picks up a TA for Sneyking as well. Only Airman farms well for VP, while TMW struggles mid. At 15 minutes in, Dignitas is up 8 kills and decides to go for Rosh; ten minutes of nothing are followed by Airman getting a triple kill and potentially generating a new opportunity for VP to re-enter the game. But VP have no wards or outer towers, and are thus extremely vulnerable outside the base. The team ends up unsuccessfully hunting for smoke ganks without any vision at all, and pays for it by having substandard engagements and no Roshan control. This leads to some really heavy TA+Gyro damage rolling over the Radiant again and again. With the 1 game disadvantage they get by coming from the losers’ bracket, VP finds itself at death’s door. A 2-0 has already been awarded to Dignitas.



Game 2



Hoping to avoid an embarrassing sweep and another Gyrocopter poach, VP actually ban it, while drafting a Lone Druid for KSi to pin their hopes on, and even getting Luna for Airman. ARS-ART’s Enfeeble first Bane ensures that at 6 minutes, Aui on Lifestealer has a whopping 3 last hits with not a single safe lane tower remaining. Sneyking’s Storm Spirit has had a much better time of it, but without a developed Naix the lineup just doesn’t hold together, and VP are all too happy to keep dominating while Luna’s Lunar Blessing gives them a substantial teamfight advantage. Aui actually gets 70 last hits in 10 minutes to try to catch up, but their lackluster early game mean Dignitas have no chance in larger engagements, and at 21 minutes VP pushes in to administer the mercy killing. 2-1 Dignitas.



Game 3



In game 3 we still see no Gyrocopter, and now Dignitas takes TA in the first three picks, hoping for a Sneyking performance on the level of his first game. A last second Tiny pickup in the draft is a gambit for Dignitas, but the early game is more about back and forth rotations from supports, and Sneyking solidly winning mid against TMW’s Puck. ARS-ART, once again on the Jakiro that won them the incredible loser’s bracket final, is dominant in some early engagements, but Dignitas re-focuses on to him in the subsequent fights, and he plummets out of relevance while Sneyking rockets towards near total dominance. Counter-pushing with Luna and Nature’s Prophet becomes the name of the game for VP, but Dignitas stays on task and breaks the base by 30 minutes. Tiny ends up being only marginally relevant, but the same can’t be said of the TA: Sneyking finished 19-1 and with convincing play over the course of the tournament once again earned a place in Dignitas’s full-time roster. Dignitas finish at 3 - 1 and end up $4000 richer.





What would in retrospect prove to be one of Santa’s last series in the Virtus.pro lineup pitted them against one of the toughest opponents in the invitational: Fnatic, who have nonetheless had some trouble breaking Russian teams.In every game of the series, Fnatic bans Airman’s legendary Gyrocopter first. This time, they pick up Wisp/Chaos Knight and add a Broodmother for the fifth pick. Virtus.pro’s approach, meanwhile, is a carry Vengeful Spirit. It isn’t the right choice. KSi’s Lone Druid struggles against the Wisp/CK dual mid and the aggressive trilane gets some farm for Venge but not nearly enough to fend off the snowballing CK or punish the pushing Brood top. GG in sixteen minutes.This time VP bans the Wisp. Fnatic finds themselves short on hero options to deal with the illusions of PL and so pivot to more of an all-in early push strat featuring Chen and Leshrac. However, they cannot actually find the opportunity to push, hemmed in by a surprisingly effective pure-roaming Alchemist from KSi generating tons of room for PL to get unmanageably big.Fnatic plays out a scrappy game that they arguably lost at the draft stage. They pick up Shadow Demon and Dark Seer as their first two, but VP calls their bluff anyway and puts Airman on PL again. Fnatic counters with anti-push from ES and Tinker and a N0tail Meepo to taste, but this plays right into VP’s inescapable chasing lineup of Blink Dagger Nyx, Clockwerk, and Nature’s Prophet. They play keep-away as much as they can, persisting even beyond the point of no return after some BM directed towards N0tail from NS, but TMW’s Nyx gets the action VP needs to once again cultivate inevitability on PL surprisingly early. Fnatic finds themselves the first team in the losers’ bracket.With Black not able to make the series, Mouz had the unenviable task of having stand-ins fill in their critical #1 role against the V-God fortified Empire.Kuroky stands in for Black's Anti-Mage and Mouz puts FATA on what is, at this point, an exotic solo mid Juggernaut. Mouz's weird laning puts them behind early, especially Alex's hardlane KOTL. They do a great job of trading towers pound for pound - Kuro even manages to get Empire's top melee rax in exchange for Mouz's middle barracks - but when the rubber hits the road BlowYourBrain's Gyro is slightly too big and Empire roll over the ancient.Mouz runs a fairly standard Lone Druid-centric lineup while Empire goes for Big Teamfight Damage with Dream Coil setup for Illuminates + Requiem of Souls. Scandal struggles early in the hard lane as Clockwerk but in general the game proceeds pugilistically, with Vigoss's Puck carrying a lot of water even as BlowYourBrain’s SF struggles early. The game remains extremely tight for almost half an hour, with 1 kill and less than 1000 gold earned separating the two teams for long stretches, but at 28 minutes a fresh Manta added onto his BKB gives BlowYourBrain the damage necessary to wipe Mouz in exchange for just his own life, which pries the lid off the match. Seizing the moment, Empire picks up more kills, Rosh, more kills, a set of rax, more kills, mega creeps... and earn advancement to the winners' semifinals.No Tidehunter originally snapped a comically long winning streak for Liquid with a win in the Raidcall D2L a couple weeks prior. Did they have another in them?NTH confidently responds to Liquid's Riki with an AM for Loda, clearly unafraid of the so-called "hard counter." Liquid farms up a Leshrac in the middle quickly in addition to Riki on the safelane, but while TC's Bloodstone comes very quickly indeed, the game is too passive for him to accumulate all that many charges, so all that farm remains arguably wasted. A 5v5 engagement at Roshan tips dramatically in NTH's favour when a Furion ult + two Illuminates blow up in Liquid's faces, exchanging 5 kills for just Loda's Aegis. The game becomes academic thereafter.Lone Druid and Chen picks in the first phase signal some urgency from No Tidehunter that they double with Shadow Shaman and Dragon Knight. Liquid seems unconcerned about the potentially overwhelming amounts of push and draft no special countermeasures. They rack up a few kills, but by 21 minutes NTH have every outer tower, a 10k gold earned advantage, and the confidence to go high ground before Korok can muster much of a counterargument. Liquid disregard the all-in push to their detriment and find themselves in the lower bracket.Two hotly tipped Western teams find themselves surprisingly in the lower bracket of the RDL not long after their epic TPL fixture. Once again, Synderen is standing in for Fnatic.For the second time in this tournament, Juggernaut goes mid. TC's Anti-Mage cops a couple of deaths on the way to his Battlefury, but skipping tier 1 boots still lets him hit it very quickly. Fnatic, feeling the heat, unleashes the Juggerpush, earning them 3 towers, some trades, and a Rosh, but they still cannot find map control over a slippery Liquid team despite having nearly full map vision. Consequently, TC has 300 last hits in a half hour, eventually going high ground a few minutes later with Heart, Battlefury, Basher, and Manta.Liquid doubles down on the AM while Fnatic looks to go over the top. TC hits Battlefury at 12:00 this time, but Hanni's strong Blink timing on Magnus puts a lot of pressure on Liquid. The game stays close well into its thirtieth minute but Fnatic is more comfortable letting the game wear on late. After a big missed smoke gank from Liquid an awkward fight breaks out near the Dire secret shop where Korok's QOP dies in an RP before contributing much of anything. Liquid lacks the buybacks to stop the bot and top raxes falling in short order.At first it seems as though Korok's Storm Spirit is going to be suppressed effectively by Fnatic mid while Era farms hard on N'aix. However Fnatic doesn't develop a clear advantage and Hanni can't seem to generate the big RPs even with a Blink. In a relatively passive and yet fairly sloppy game, both teams lose core heroes all over, but at 24 minutes Liquid pushes out of their base in a flash and punish Fnatic's aggression with 3 pickoffs and two towers in one fell swoop. After this, Fnatic's momentum is stopped dead, and Liquid seizes an increasing level advantage on their way to 14 straight kills and the tap-out that makes Fnatic the first team eliminated from the tournament.The Russian team with the sometimes seemingly-random roster against the North American team with the sometimes seemingly-random draft strategies; with both teams fielding a standin, who advances?Dignitas puts Lycan in the friendly jungle and Enigma in the enemy jungle. Initially, this all just seems too weird, and Solo dominates as TA in mid against Gyrocopter, but things turn around quickly after Way2Sexy critically bails out both Sneyking and Universe with a great Black Hole that causes a 4 for 0 trade. RoX finds their supports 3-4 levels behind Dignitas's greedy XP-maximizing strategy and lack the muscle to stop the Tier 3 push when it comes.Things go poorly immediately for RoX in Game 2. Sneyking wins mid and Aui absolutely devastates the Radiant safe lane, going 4-1 and downing both outer towers quickly. RoX is never remotely in the fights and indeed can't afford to take any once Warlock hits a fast Aghanim's. BzzIsPerfect farms his heart out on AM to rocket to the top of net worth and levels but it isn't enough when Warlock finishes Refresher inside of 30 and Dignitas rolls over the interior base with the power of Double Double Demon Doublified.VP, now avec ARS-ART, looks for the strong support to give them the edge they need against a team that they often struggle to overcome in the early game.Virtus Pro doesn’t go Wisp/CK nearly as often as some other Russian teams but they do so here. S4 on TA brings TMW’s mid Beastmaster down to critical levels several times, but no kill is forthcoming. Meanwhile, the CK/Wisp train is pulling into the station. NTH stays on the aggressive for some time but Virtus Pro applies too much pressure too early - well before Loda hits armlet - and NTH doesn’t have the tools to respond.VP scores a nearly identical team composition to NTH’s Game 1 with a Brewmaster in place of the TA, while NTH takes a QOP for S4 and their pocket Phantom Assassin for Loda. Akke’s early courier kill stymies TMW’s bottle crow. With three early towers and total map control via wards, NTH is able to gank VP everywhere on the map, picking up a passel of kills for S4 and Akke and all the time in the world for Loda to build up. Akke ends up 7-0-9 on support Lina as NTH convincingly takes the game.No Tidehunter drafts Wisp again but VP pounces with immediate killing intent from the first minute with their Rubick/Lina/Weaver trilane. Again and again, NTH attempts to commit resources to the bottom lane to tip the 3v3 their way, but the situation just keeps getting worse as everyone sent down to the lane dies immediately. By the 13 minute mark Airman’s Weaver is 15-0-8 and NTH, reeling, taps out, relegated to the lower bracket.Mouz and RoX both look to stay alive after being sent down 2-0.Alex’s KOTL gets caught out of position, giving a quick first blood to RoX, and they quickly add two more kills. When Black cops a sloppy death as well, the early situation for Mouz looks a little grim. They earn kills here and there, but Solo’s Nyx runs rampant over Mouz and at 26 minutes they’re down two melee rax and 18 deaths.This time Mouz is the one putting pressure on early, with qojqva and FATA grabbing some early kills. Solo once again does work - his Magnus steals a Roshan kill and Aegis, turning around a difficult situation for RoX, but Black’s Shadowblade Alchemist is rampaging across the map. RoX ends up hemmed into their base and down a set of rax for ages, but the Rapier/Manta on Bzz’s Gyro, plus Empower plus Vengeance Aura, makes delivering the deathblow difficult for Mouz, even when up 30k gold. After a 20 minute stalemate Mouz daringly goes for megas, but RoX is able to just barely hold them off. Finally, at 49 minutes and up 50,000 gold, Mouz kills Bzz, claiming the Rapier and the win.FATA Batrider vs Solo Nyx in the middle defines the early action of the game. Mouz leaps to an early advantage. RoX tries to turn it around with a very tenacious pursuit at Radiant Tier 1 bottom with Lifestealer and Medallion Weaver, but Mouz immediately counterattacks and clear out the core heroes. The game can still tilt either way, but RoX is forced to forfeit due to another tournament engagement (EMS), ending their run in this one somewhat ignominiously. This forfeit is eventually overturned and the teams continue on another day, but RoX falls in short orderTwo European juggernauts both fight to keep their hopes in the home of the Russians alive.Rubick somehow sneaks to Mouz’s 4th pick with a Magnus on the field, and their Nature’s Prophet + Lifestealer + Storm seem to promise bombs ahoy. But Mouz struggles to gank early, especially on S4, who rockets to 4-0-2 with a courier snipe as Magnus. Relegated to using Lifestealer bombs to farm, Mouz delays the inevitable for a small stretch but the inability to get even a single easy kill with their gankers dooms them.NTH poaches the Lifestealer and adds a Gyro, while Mouz takes an Alchemist screening for a Morphling! While the support Alchemist isn’t that inspiring early, Mouz wins every lane, avoiding substantially putting the Morphling to the test as they more or less just stomp, led by near-perfect FATA Puck play. Once Morphling can kill large swaths of their team, NTH calls GG.Mouz clearly angles for the KOTL+PL early and NTH surprisingly lets them freely take it. Once again a #1 pick is followed by another #1 pick, this time with NTH picking DK and then... Dooooom for Loda! Akke Chen keeps too much from happening other than constant Mouz towers falling, and Mouz requires too much legwork to gank even DK. Aside from PL, Mouz are primarily bursty magic damage, and NTH gets the right item pickups - Orchid, BKB, Pipe, Heart, Blademail - to prevent themselves from getting popped, overwhelming Mouz before Black’s PL can totally take over.Empire, which has a pretty good lifetime record at Dignitas, wants to send the Americans down into the lower bracket ASAP to advance to the Winners’ Finals themselves. Dignitas, with Sneyking in tow, wants to upend that expected result.Empire drafts the time-honoured worse-than-it-sounds combo of SD/Kunkka and somehow feed 3 kills to Fogged’s Jakiro early, although their farm is ahead and across more heroes, particularly after a pair of good fights at Radiant tier 1 top and Dire tier 1 mid. Dignitas can’t catch a break until a great fight in bot lane that gives Fear, standing in for Aui, an ultra kill and Aegis. They once again dominate Empire in the next fight, seizing the advantage and a pair of rax, and at this point Fear and Universe are both scarier than anything Empire can field.Dignitas once again grabs Warlock, while Empire drafts Clinkz for what feels like the first time A.F. (After Funn1k). BlowYourBrain confidently dives the tower while Scandal bullies Universe bot, and Fogged can’t find his farm top as Warlock, choosing to give Sneyking’s Luna the mid lane. In fact, Empire basically have the run of the map early, and brutally sabotage an early Roshan attempt from Dignitas to bring it to 16-4 and the early GG.Dignitas runs the unconventional Shadow Shaman and Earthshaker to ensure that Universe’s Gyro can secure trilane kills, and indeed two are obtained lightning-fast on Scandal’s Bounty Hunter. At 11 minutes Universe is 4-0-4 with 100% teamfight participation. at 15 minutes he’s 6-0-6 and Sneyking is 5-0-5. Then it became 8-0-6 (on his way to 14-0-14) and 6-0-7. Empire continue to prey at the weak links by kiling off Fogged and way2sexy in every fight, but the gold and XP deficit to Dignitas’ core heroes grows to staggering and concede-inducing proportions.Sent down to the Losers’ Bracket the previous day by a Dignitas packing two standins, Empire looked for redemption against Liquid as they continued through the North American gauntlet.Korok on Puck vs Vigoss on QOP in the middle promised to be the headlining matchup of the game, and indeed some intriguing cat and mouse is played out, with Vigoss eventually drawing first blood with the help of some rotation. The situation becomes somewhat more critical after Vigoss seizes a triple kill bottom. Liquid finds itself facing down an improbable 10k gold deficit at 15 minutes in, and although ixmike picks off a Roshan kill from long range they don’t get the attendant Aegis. While Empire looks substantially less than impeccable and feed a courier unnecessarily, they do pick up the first rax at 32 minutes... but Liquid is closing the gap and the game can still tilt after a fight at Radiant top rax at 39 minutes goes calamitously for Empire. Suddenly, after an entire game on the offensive, the Russians are on the back foot completely, and they’re unable to regain a toehold before Liquid pushes through the mid rax and the game.Liquid secures an early pick of Storm Spirit this time to try to tip the mid matchup more in their favour, but Empire sends the game for a loop with a late Treant Protector pick - their second in as many days. Liquid appears to have the advantage in the 3v3 lane, but the subtleties of Treant make themselves known in slow farm for TC’s Lifestealer and confident diving from Vigoss’s Living Armor-empowered Queen of Pain. Once again, QoP is dominant early, and Empire isn’t letting another game slip away; they start pushing very aggressively, even before any Necronomicons hit the field, and eventually they get the fight they are looking for to secure the bottom rax. Liquid still has an opportunity to stall Empire’s progress, but a failed defense of the base leads to them down 2 sets of rax, and a buyback-festooned teamfight takes Empire the rest of the way to megas.Empire drafts a surprise Disruptor against a team with no blinkers, possibly as an unorthodox Magnus counter attempt. After fluff’s hardlane Lion somehow claims first blood in the middle in exchange for Liquid’s courier, a series of major skirmishes break out - skirmishes that Korok’s Magnus is always on the correct side of. Empire finds the situation in mid untenable, continually rotating players there only to find them swept away. Silent can’t get anything done on Disruptor at all, ending the game 0-4-0 with most of his teammates hardly better.So far all of Liquid’s series have gone the full length with some tight games - will they be able to sneak past No Tidehunter, a team that can win very big when it wins?Liquid picks Dota’s current bete noire combo - KOTL+PL - and back it up by trying to forestall high-gank approaches from NTH with Riki and NS bans. In fact, NTH don’t seem to have a traditional pairing for their Wisp at all - Gyro is the closest candidate. All seems according to plan for Liquid at first until the team trades 4 for Loda, all while Bulldog farms up his Nature’s Prophet towards a Shadowblade + Sheep. Liquid finds themselves under immense split-push pressure, the possibility of getting blown up by globals, and an immense farm deficit. Unable to find any advantage to rely upon at all, they suit up for game 2.Continuing the Loda tradition of quirky carries, NTH picks up Spectre, while Liquid puts TC on Void. Their XP and gold more or less track each other for a while, but egm’s Nyx and s4’s Windrunner are pulling ahead on levels, and ensuing engagements go worse and worse for Liquid as the team is unable to respond to Loda with much of anything that’ll stick through stuns, Cogs, and Illuminates. They tap out and are sent out of the tournament, with No Tidehunter advancing to the lower bracket finals.Virtus.Pro, a team whose consistency seems to have been undented by a dramatic and controversial roster change, goes up against Dignitas, a team not known for consistency of its results but a very high ceiling.Dignitas seeks to pierce the top tier 2 with their Shadow Shaman, Visage, Gyrocopter spearhead but get completely sideswiped by TMW’s Magnus for a 4-1 trade. A similar outcome occurs when Dignitas attempts to push bot tier 1. After that they don’t dare to push, settling for a Roshan and a defensive posture. They try one more time at Radiant tier 2 bottom, but once again fail, this time not even getting Roshan. All of their barracks fall and they tap out.Dignitas drops the Visage but keeps Rhasta, this time adding a QoP to give them the last clump of damage they were missing in early engagements. Even with Aui dropping twice, Sneyking is getting enough kills that Dignitas leaps to a dramatic lead. VP manages to grab a Rosh in the middle of a heated teamfight, but Sneyking is getting bigger and bigger, reaching 16-2 at one point. VP holds on admirably, chasing individual players with KSi’s bear and Airman N’aix when they can, but Dignitas eventually decides they’ve had enough of pussyfooting and push to the throne.Ars-Art grabs FB with a dive beyond Tier 1 on his VS, but Dignitas methodically strikes back with attacks every few minutes while developing Gyrocopter and Puck. Still, VP initially gets the better of engagements with strong play from KSi’s Bat and TMW’s QoP, leading 14-5 at 18 minutes. When they add Roshan to their bounty things seem quite bleak for Dignitas, but VP dramatically fails to break the base two times in a row. Even with a substantial lead they become gunshy, which gives Universe just the time he needs to get to Shadowblade, BKB, Daedalus and an Aegis on his Gyrocopter. VP is suddenly caught flat-footed, unable to overcome the sudden Gyro power, and lose their first set of rax, followed by the second and third, and the winners’ bracket final.The team that out-aggroes the Russians and the least aggro Russian team meet for the second time in the tournament, VP on the way down and NTH on the way back up.VP drafts a surprisingly Lodaish Spectre and NTH spends the early game making them pay for it, piling on the pressure with a WR/PL/KOTL trilane and Bulldog Prophet support. But VP somehow weathers the storm and put NTH on the back foot all through the first night, despite S4's Nightstalker. Even with Airman way behind Loda, and going the extremely old-school Vanguard/Radiance build, VP takes fight after fight on the back of Nyx Assassin, with a big one at Rosh. Yet NTH is ready too. Loda, rocketing towards 600 last hits, pushes multiple lanes way, way in, while Bulldog’s Necro 3 helps too. VP manages to turn away Loda after one set of rax is downed, but NTH grabs Rosh and goes in again, with PL illusions eventually disposing of the second set of rax. VP’s last ditch counterpush is just a bit short, with Airman lacking the muscle to punch through on highground even with multiple KSi Illusory Walls to help.VP thinks about the KOTL/PL and decides against it, taking Lifestealer, while NTH deploys their Riki/Io pocket picks with Akke on the support Gyro. There’s some back and forth but at around 13 or 14 minutes VP suddenly realises that NTH actually have no counterpush to speak of, pushing all the way down the bottom lane and securing a rax at 16 minutes. From there, even with Loda assassinating players left and right, KSi’s panda bear leads VP on an unstoppable pushing crusade.In their matchups, NTH usually attempts to beat down VP with ganks and aggression before VP can get a word in edgewise, but in this game it’s VP picking up the Io/CK and No Tidehunter hunkering down with a Faceless Void. NTH starts with a robust XP lead but attempt to turn it into counter-aggression too early, losing Void three times and the rest of the team intermittently. Now NTH are behind the ball, with not only CK doing well but a surprisingly high level Ars-Art Jakiro with no deaths and an early Force Staff landing Ice Paths left and right. Void is huge - BKB, Mask of Madness, Butterfly, Maelstrom - but not huge enough to prevent losing a rax, or an absolutely perfect Macropyre across the Roshan to Ancient stairs killing three. Loda buys back to prevent the Rosh kill, but ends up on the rune high ground after an errant Reality Rift, where once again Jakiro's slows and Ice Paths make him lose the duel. With no more buybacks for NTH, that’s all she wrote for their sets of barracks and their hope of making it to the grand finals.Still unsure about when Sneyking would return to full-time duty, Dignitas here is looking to close the door on Virtus.pro once again and take the title.In game one, Dignitas poaches Airman’s Gyro and picks up a TA for Sneyking as well. Only Airman farms well for VP, while TMW struggles mid. At 15 minutes in, Dignitas is up 8 kills and decides to go for Rosh; ten minutes of nothing are followed by Airman getting a triple kill and potentially generating a new opportunity for VP to re-enter the game. But VP have no wards or outer towers, and are thus extremely vulnerable outside the base. The team ends up unsuccessfully hunting for smoke ganks without any vision at all, and pays for it by having substandard engagements and no Roshan control. This leads to some really heavy TA+Gyro damage rolling over the Radiant again and again. With the 1 game disadvantage they get by coming from the losers’ bracket, VP finds itself at death’s door. A 2-0 has already been awarded to Dignitas.Hoping to avoid an embarrassing sweep and another Gyrocopter poach, VP actually ban it, while drafting a Lone Druid for KSi to pin their hopes on, and even getting Luna for Airman. ARS-ART’s Enfeeble first Bane ensures that at 6 minutes, Aui on Lifestealer has a whopping 3 last hits with not a single safe lane tower remaining. Sneyking’s Storm Spirit has had a much better time of it, but without a developed Naix the lineup just doesn’t hold together, and VP are all too happy to keep dominating while Luna’s Lunar Blessing gives them a substantial teamfight advantage. Aui actually gets 70 last hits in 10 minutes to try to catch up, but their lackluster early game mean Dignitas have no chance in larger engagements, and at 21 minutes VP pushes in to administer the mercy killing. 2-1 Dignitas.In game 3 we still see no Gyrocopter, and now Dignitas takes TA in the first three picks, hoping for a Sneyking performance on the level of his first game. A last second Tiny pickup in the draft is a gambit for Dignitas, but the early game is more about back and forth rotations from supports, and Sneyking solidly winning mid against TMW’s Puck. ARS-ART, once again on the Jakiro that won them the incredible loser’s bracket final, is dominant in some early engagements, but Dignitas re-focuses on to him in the subsequent fights, and he plummets out of relevance while Sneyking rockets towards near total dominance. Counter-pushing with Luna and Nature’s Prophet becomes the name of the game for VP, but Dignitas stays on task and breaks the base by 30 minutes. Tiny ends up being only marginally relevant, but the same can’t be said of the TA: Sneyking finished 19-1 and with convincing play over the course of the tournament once again earned a place in Dignitas’s full-time roster. Dignitas finish at 3 - 1 and end up $4000 richer.





Dota 2 Tivo: Ritmix RDL By Vyk







VP vs NTH Game 3 (Losers’ Bracket Finals)







Possibly the best game of the tournament. Excellent individual play from multiple players, some huge hard carries, and at least one heart-pounding teamfight.





NTH vs Mouz Game 3







KOTL and PL vs... DK and Dooooooom?





TL vs Empire Game 1







One of the bigger comebacks of the tournament.





TL vs Empire Game 2







Empire run Treant Protector for the second time after drafting him in TPL. Stuff ensues.





Dignitas vs RoX.KIS Game 1







Dignitas go with a gutsy but greedy “friendly jungle and enemy jungle” strategy, featuring Lycan + Enigma. Does it pay off?





Possibly the best game of the tournament. Excellent individual play from multiple players, some huge hard carries, and at least one heart-pounding teamfight.KOTL and PL vs... DK and Dooooooom?One of the bigger comebacks of the tournament.Empire run Treant Protector for the second time after drafting him in TPL. Stuff ensues.Dignitas go with a gutsy but greedy “friendly jungle and enemy jungle” strategy, featuring Lycan + Enigma. Does it pay off?







Guest writer: Vyk

Gfx: Shiroiusagi, Hawaiianpig

Editors: TheEmulator, riptide, Firebolt145

Over the last couple of weeks, the top teams in Western DotA battled it out in the. Though it went under the radar, there was $6000 on the line in this Russian tournament and each team gave it their all to reach the top spot. In the end, Team Dignitas beat Virtus.pro in the finals to walk away with the $4000 first place prize.Since many of you may have missed this tourney, for this recap we had our new guest writer, Vyk, give us a Full Recap of each game. It is extremely thorough, and we highly recommend a read if you'd like to catch up on the games but don't have the time to watch them. If you'd like to watch a few games though, we highly recommend you check out the Dota 2 Tivo section of this recap. It contains the best games of the tournament, carefully chosen by Vyk for your viewing pleasure.In conclusion, congratulations to Team Dignitas on their win, and we look forward to bringing you coverage of more of these regional tournaments in the weeks and months to come. Enjoy! (Oh, also, Focus Mode !) Administrator