Today saw the start of ESL One Frankfurt 2016, with eight teams battling it out for their share of the spoils.
Each group stage would see three series today with group A’s match-ups being; Team Liquid vs Vega Squadron, Alliance vs Fnatic and Vega Squadron vs Alliance.
The first series saw Team Liquid going down to Vega Squadron. After their brilliant 2nd place finish at the Manila Major, expectations were high for Team Liquid but without Fata, who was feeling too sick to play today, they seemed a little out of place. Having to swap positions to make room for their coach, Heen, Liquid went down 2-1 to Vega. However, we do have news that Fata does already feel better and will be back tomorrow to hopefully keep Liquid’s hopes in Frankfurt alive as they battle in an elimination match up.
The next series, which started as the same time as the first, would see Fnatic losing out to Alliance. With a sixty five minute game one, Alliance took the lead in the series, even after Fnatic put up an almost perfect high ground defense for a very long time. However, game two would see Fnatic utlising the Void + Phoenix combination to secure team fights and tie the series. The Brewmaster pick up from Alliance turned out to be a very big factor in their win as this “new” pick for the meta worked really well as s4 took it mid. This would mean that Alliance would go up against Vega Squadron in the next game while Fnatic would fight it out against Team Liquid to retain a spot at the event.
The last series of group A for the day would see another three game series as Alliance and Vega faced each other. After a very drawn out but exciting game one, Loda’s Terrorblade ripped through Vega Squadron, giving Alliance the lead in the series as they took game one. But Vega were not to let Alliance have their way again, as they drafted an Axe in game two, who rolled through the Alliance line up, dunking left, right and centre. With the last game of the series would see Vega take an Alchemist to almost 900 GPM at just twenty minutes - becoming the six slotted beast at twenty eight minutes before destroy Alliance’s base.
Alliance now move down to the elimination bracket, where they’ll face either Team Liquid or Fnatic, while Vega Squadron move into the main event in the winners bracket.
