Veni, Vidi, almost ViCi

The dream has not come true, ViCi lost in the quarter final against LGD.cn. However, ViCi's success is the biggest story of this G-League season.

Picks ViCi Gaming

Player Role Heroes in G-League

(min. 2 plays), (win-loss)

Cty Carry Lone Druid (1-3)

Anti-Mage (2-1)

Luna (0-2)

sydm Solo Mid Beastmaster (1-2)

Brewmaster (1-1)

Templar Assassin (0-2)

Shadow Fiend (1-1)

xtt Offlane Dark Seer (1-4)

Sven (1-1)

Batrider (1-1)

Magnus (2-0)

fy/yxy Support Rubick (2-3)

Shadow Demon (3-1)

Fenrir Support Lina (3-3)

Leshrac (2-2)

Shadow Demon (0-2)

Christoph “malnor” Helbig Malnor is former Editor-in-chief of GosuGamers.net, now a guest editor for Dota 2 and general eSports topics.

In the end, it just wasn't enough, by a swipe or two. Not breaching high group in the deciding match against LGD despite having a decent advantage meant game over for ViCi Gaming in the quarter final of G-League. Fy, sydm, xtt, Cty and Fenrir were just one game away from reaching the epic best-of-five semi final matches played this Friday and Sunday in the most important Asian event of the winter.They were so close to beating one of the most consistent teams of 2012. Getting LGD.cn to the verge of a loss in a best-of-three is a symbol for ViCi's impressive success in this G-League tournament. LGD.cn has been playing together for more than a year, ViCi only since October.All odds were against ViCi Gaming in this tournament. The five players between 18 and 26 years old just recently settled in their team house in November. They qualified for G-League through one of the easier groups. The main round started badly for ViCi Gaming with two 0-2 losses against iG and MUFC. Most people already counted them out as they needed a clear 2-0 swipe against TongFu on Wednesday to reach at least a 3-way-tie.G-League production always shows the result of a poll right before a match, against TongFu only 2% of the audience believed in VG, against LGD.cn it was even a 1 to 99 ratio in fan support. However, this G-League tournament will be remembered as the one where ViCi impressed everyone within just two days.Fy, or yxy sometimes ingame has shown impressive performances with his Rubick. Especially in game 2 against LGD, stealing Reverse Polarities and Burrow Strikes made him one of the match winners.Fenrir has made a breakthrough by hitting impressive shares of his Split Earth with Leshrac.Cty's performance on Anti-Mage was one of the key points in winning against MUFC in the tiebreakers. Overall ViCi Gaming has improved map awareness a lot during the course of the tournament, though the matches against LGD.cn showed that's something they still have to work, especially when they don't get their split pushing strategies through the draft.Xtt had his great moments against TongFu in the regular group stage where he played Magnus and completely caught TongFu on the backfoot with his Reverse Polarities.Sydm maybe is the only player not to be remembered with signature top play, but rather his miscalculated Brewmaster mana pools in the quarter final against LGD.cn. In both the first and the second game, he failed to save enough mana to use his Primal Split defensively in order to escape and prevent i.e. first blood going the way of LGD.Although ViCi has not made it to the prize money ranks, they definitely can be happy about their performance on their two decisive days in G-League. Fy & Co. left DK and MUFC behind them in this tournament and are tied with ForLove at fifth place.The winner of G-League will be decided among iG, LGD.int, LGD.cn and TongFu. Game 1 and 2 of the two semi finals will be played on Friday, the remaining matches on Sunday. Make sure not to miss the outcome of most likely the highest class Dota 2 matches currently available. ViCi will watch their competitors precisely - and keep learning from them and adapting to them.