Following the elimination of all four European and Asia-Pacific teams in G2 Esports, Team Secret, BDS Esport and NORA-Rengo, today saw the wide open tournament take a surprise turn as the teams of Liquid and MIBR gave LATAM their best performance to date.
--
Jump to:
- Spacestation Gaming vs MIBR
- Luminosity Gaming vs Team Liquid
- Luminosity Gaming vs Spacestation Gaming
- MIBR vs Team Liquid
- Day 3
---
Spacestation Gaming vs MIBR
The first game of the day saw SSG and MIBR face-off following their victories over NORA-Rengo and G2 Esports. We began on Villa, SSG’s choice with MIBR starting on defence first giving them an early advantage that they seized in increasingly one-sided rounds. A six-second triple kill on round one by BULLET1 was followed up by his teammate of C3ber on round two who achieved a quadruple kill, one-versus-one victory to shut down SSG’s best chance of taking a round in the half.
With MIBR sweeping their defensive rounds, SSG aimed to do the same starting with a flawless defence of the Aviator/Games site, however, as SSG went onto the Kitchen/Dining site, four quick kills from Hugzord and MKing brought back a 2v4 situation to take the map 7-1.
Next up, we had MIBR’s pick of Coastline which, after map one’s result, was sure to be an uphill battle for Spacestation. After opening up the map with a successful Kitchen hold, SSG responded with four round wins in a row in which they died a total of just four times before MIBR finally stopped the run to end the half 4-2. MIBR took three rounds in a row for themselves on their attack before the two teams pushed forward into overtime
BULLET1 during map two
The final three rounds of the game saw Novys secure a triple kill on round 13 which allowed Hugzord to get off a sneaky defuse in Kitchen to win the round, an almost flawless round from SSG come out on their own attack before, finally, on round 15 double kills from both Novys and BULLET ended the map 8-7 to take the series 2-0.
The statistics between MIBR and SSG in the upper-bracket semi-finals
Luminosity Gaming vs Team Liquid
Next up we saw the second NA vs LATAM matchup of the day which saw a remarkably similar story to game one. Liquid kicked of LG’s map pick of Kafe by securing a successful defence of the Reading/Dining Room objective in a round which saw five kills in eight seconds before Paluh added to this by securing triple kills in the following two rounds to set up a clear lead. While Paluh went on to get just two kills in the rest of the map, the rest of his team took his slack as they ran through all six defensive rounds before taking the map 7-1 in an identical round win order to the previous MIBR vs SSG matchup.
LG responded to this by taking the initial lead on Bank before, following a flawless round by Liquid, they went on to clean out their own defensive half, 5-1 before taking round seven to put themselves on match point and to set themselves up for a map three.
Slashug in his third ever map for LG
This, however, was not to come as Liquid responded to this with extreme aggression of which LG couldn’t handle as triple kills were achieved by psk1 once and Paluh twice on rounds eight, eleven and twelve while xS3xyCake got the maps sole quadruple kill on round 10 all meaning the team pushed it back from 1-6 to 6-6 into overtime.
Here, Paluh achieved his fifth 3k of the game on round 13 before Muringa finished off Doodle with zero seconds remaining and, finally, Nesk achieved his first multi-kill of the game to finish off the map 8-6 and the series 2-0 to book an all-LATAM upper-bracket final.
The statistics between Team Liquid and Luminosity Gaming in the upper-bracket semi-finals
Luminosity Gaming vs Spacestation Gaming
After two somewhat one-sided matches, the two North American rosters fought in the lower-bracket with the losers going out. Map one of Clubhouse saw more clutches than the previous games combined with round one kicking off the map with Hyena winning a 1v2 by running away from Canadian till the clock ran out. Hyena quickly followed this up by another 1v1 victory on round three against Bosco, once again due to the clock, before SSG finally won a 1vX as Rampy killed both Hyena and Doodle to defend his planted defuser and end the first half, 2-4 to LG.
The second half saw SSG kick off a remarkable comeback of their own as Canadian took their first defensive round with a 1v1 victory over Slashug in what was the first of five back-to-back round wins from Spacestation to close out the map, 7-4
Bosco during map one
Map two saw the teams return to LG’s pick of Coastline as SSG started on the attack. Spacestation seemed like they had this map on lockdown as multiple round wins came in 4v1 situations while LG’s two wins on the first half came on the back of a 1v1 victory between Doodle and Canadian and another quadruple kill, this time by Slashug. Despite there initial 4-2 half which they quickly managed to push to a 6-2 lead, this was not enough as, in what seems to be a theme at this Minor, this map saw a huge comeback by LG who won four rounds running to push to overtime.
Overtime saw three more rounds as, following an almost perfect round 13 by LG, SSG took round 14 thanks to a triple kill by Rampy to set up a final decider round. A quick push onto the Blue/Sunrise objective by the attackers of LG led to a total of four kills in five seconds before Hyena planted the bomb in 3v2 situation which ended as Hyena then traded out Rexen’s death to take the map, 8-7, and push onto map three
LG preparing between maps
The final map was, unfortunately, not as explosive as the two we saw before it with Spacestation Gaming clearly on top of Consulate. Across the eight rounds, LG won just a single one while attacking the Tellers/Archives fourth site with ThinkingNade’s successful 1v2 clutch on the following round killing any momentum this could create, allowing the team to steamroll to a 7-1 map win and a 2-1 series win.
The statistics for the lower bracket game between Luminosity Gaming and Spacestation Gaming
MIBR vs Team Liquid
And so, we had the final map of the day in the winner’s final between the two Brazilian representatives of MIBR and Team Liquid. After the two LATAM teams played extremely aggressively against their NA opponents in the previous round, both teams calmed down as they faced each other with notably fewer runouts, multi-kills or wide peaks as both teams tried to avoid the tactics their opponents are used to. This led to eight full rounds ending in 1v3 or worse situations as the teams traded rounds with the lone standout play by Novys in round seven:
Round nine saw the first real explosive round of the map as MIBR attacked the Church/Arsenal objective and Nesk’s initial double kill was responded to by the plant being initiated by MKing in a 2v2 situation before MKing also finished off Nesk to leave xS3xyCake in a 1v2 situation which, despite winning the gunfights, he lost as he was unable to defuse in time. With MIBR now in the lead, 5-4 they quickly closed out the remaining two rounds in 4v1 and 5v1 situations to take map one, 7-4
With this we moved onto MIBR’s map pick of Border which saw a somewhat similar story. With the exception of round two, Liquid managed to dominate their defensive half, going up 5-1 with the final round thanks to a 1v1 victory by muringa onto Hugzord. In the second half, Liquid quickly pushed onto map point, 6-2, before MIBR teased their own map two comeback before Liquid shut them down in round 10 in a flawless round to even up the scoreline.
Guille during map two
This just left map three to finish off the day with the winner jumping straight into Sunday’s best-of-five grand-final with a map advantage. This Coastline map once again saw a run of one-sided rounds with the first five seeing players stuck in one 1v5 situation and four 1v4 situations as the defenders of Liquid took the lead 4-1 before the first close round of the map. Here, an opening kill by Paluh on Jager was responded by a triple kill by Novys to heat up the round Cyber was left to defend his planted defuser against xS3xyCake and Paluh which he did successfully to win the 1v2:
Despite this, Liquid’s momentum couldn’t be stopped with Nesk getting double kills in the next two rounds before Muringa got a double kill of his own on round 11 to end the map 7-4 and win the series 2-1!
The statistics in MIBR and Liquid’s winner’s final
Day 3
Today will see the final day of action with the rough following schedule:
- MIBR vs SSG - 11:00CET / 5:00ET
- Liquid vs TBD - 14:00CET / 8:00ET
The Grand-Final will see Liquid have a map advantage in a best-of-five matchup as they've come through from the upper-bracket, losing just a single map in the process, and the game's victor will both book a spot to the 2020 Six Invitational and win a total prize of $30,000.