Photo: Ehome

The young Chinese team made a huge statement – they dropped only one game the entire tournament. In the grand finals, they picked 18 different heroes (in 4 games), which made it feel like we are watching Wings 2.0 – arguably the most exciting team to ever come out of China. That’s not a huge surprise with Y/Innocence in the captain role (ex. Captain of Wings), Faith Bian in the offlane and three young and hungry relative newcomers to the pro scene (eGo is 17, aSD 19).

With none other than the director, Xiao8, in the coaching position, it seems like this team has huge potential if they stick together in the long run.

So, what can we learn from their grand final series against the second best team in Bucharest - Gambit?

One thing that Ehome demonstrated is that the meta is not figured out yet. While Ehome made use of some of the meta-trends (e.g. Vlads and Crimson in almost every game), they also had a huge hero pool and as a result – diverse strategies. It seemed like they emphasized a lot on countering the enemy draft rather than simply sticking to what works in the patch. This is something that Wings also did in their legendary TI6 run (and makes me even more excited to see how they fare against the top teams at the major).

In the grand final series, Gambit often invested heavily in a single damage-dealing pos. 1 carry (on Daxak), and Ehome countered directly the damage output of the enemy pos. 1 hero to give themselves a big advantage.