The very first matches of the upper and lower brackets of DreamLeague Season 13 played out today, and four teams already got eliminated from the event.
Nigma fell to Evil Geniuses
In the opening series for the DreamLeague Season 13 playoffs, it was the Bukovel Minor champions versus the blue pride of North America. Nigma took a confident lead as they claimed victory in the first match, but EG managed to pull a reverse sweep and won the next two games. Turning it over into a 2:1 Evil Geniuses sent Nigmainto the lower bracket where they’ll be fighting to make it back. The ex-Team Liquid roster is infamous for almost always pulling through the lower bracket, but whether that’d be the case this time remains to be seen.
China wins over China
In the matches between the two Chinese teams, Vici Gaming came out victorious with a 2:1 over Invictus Gaming. The final game was mostly decided by Zeng “Ori”Jiaoyang thanks to his Huskar who proved simply too hard to kill for the enemy. VG’s real advantage though perhaps laid with their Elder Titan, who completely negated the enemy Morphling’s massive armor. Invictus dropped down to the lower bracket where they’ll face Team Aster as the China vs. China series continues.
The first four teams to leave DreamLeague Season 13
Unlike the matches in the upper bracket of the DreamLeague Season 13 playoffs, all of the games in the lower one were best-of-ones, meaning whoever lost was sent home right away. Team Aster prevailed over Chaos Esports Club, beastcoast defeated paiN Gaming, TNC Predator survived against Reality Rift, and Team Liquid eliminated the Russian bears Virtus.pro. While most of the matches lasted around 30 minutes, one of them stood out. Liquid and Virtus.pro had a fantastic double comeback story where the 60k gold lead wasn’t the deciding factor.
Liquid’s final push looked like their demise as the match seemed over. All Virtus.pro had to do was push and get the enemy throne, but things turned out to be more complicated than that.
Liquid somehow managed to eliminate VP’s heroes one by one and survived on the brink of defeat. With no buybacks on the side of the bears or anyone for that matter, the Russians called “GG” and made their way out of the event. The series also proved to be the lengthiest one in the playoffs with a staggering 72 minutes.
The remaining 12 teams continue their journey in the DreamLeague Season 13 playoffs, which will resume tomorrow with the first series being between Team Secret and Fnatic.
