The International 2019 grand finals recap
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Since The International’s maiden voyage in 2011, no team has ever hoisted the Aegis of Champions twice. By the time the grand Dota 2 world championship ended its ninth iteration, however, OG was able to make history as the first-ever back-to-back champions in Shanghai, China.
Last year, the N0tail-led squad pulled off a dramatic Cinderella run against the Chinese powerhouse, PSG.LGD, to win The International 2018 from the open qualifiers. This year, the same people—ana, Topson, Ceb, JerAx, and N0tail—stopped Kuroky’s Team Liquid, the winners of The International 2017, from snatching the two-time champions feat, in the best-of-five grand finals, 3-1.
The M33po Show
Team Liquid opened their return to The International 2019 grand finals with a classic Meepo pick for their midlaner, w33, and a stable lane support in the form of KuroKy’s Chen. OG tried to answer their opponent’s picks with a late game-oriented draft, picking up ana’s signature Spectre.
The entire laning phase leaned towards in favor of the defending champions thanks to topson, who was actively rotating the lanes as Tiny. OG’s gold lead ballooned up to more than 21k until an action-packed team fight in the 35-minute mark of the game left four of their heroes dead. The window of opportunity for a comeback, however, opened wide in the 46-minute mark of the match after Team Liquid’s relatively successful high ground defense that wiped all of OG’s heroes.
The game could have gone a bit longer if not for OG’s miscalculation of Meepo’s pushing prowess. Four of their heroes had the resources to buy back and defend their tower, but ana’s Spectre was too little too late from making a decision. This allowed w33 to take a significant amount of damage against the throne before OG was able to do anything to stop Team Liquid’s absolute game one win.
The Monkey King Graces the Finals
Team Liquid’s draft in the second game doesn’t really differ from their last, aside from the fact that it has more heroes that have a long ultimate cooldown. OG, refusing to play the phase that Team Liquid would like to dictate, picked up heroes who can take advantage of their enemy’s downtime.
Topson’s Monkey King led the charge after performing relatively well against w33’s Templar Assassin. Team Liquid had no choice but to react to everything OG does, ultimately failing to lose control of the game’s tempo that they should be dictating. As a result, the match recorded an unbelievable 31 combined kills, 21 of which were from OG, in just 20 minutes.
The bloodbath only went worse as Team Liquid’s bodies continued to drop. They tapped out after a little more than 30 minutes with a 31k gold lead deficit. OG’s ana finished the game with an impressive 12/2/0 kill-death-assist standings, but Topson’s signature Monkey King got the game-high 16 kills and 22.2k net worth.
OG: The Teamfight Kings
What OG displayed on their prior win apparently was only a snippet of a bigger picture. As Team Liquid questionably decided to stick with a strategy focused around Templar Assassin and Tidehunter, dismantling their playstyle posed zero problems for OG, unlike the first game of the series.
As expected, the defending Aegis of Champions bearers were able to push their opponents to the edge of their tournament lives, but not without a seemingly endless killing spree. The game ended in just 23 minutes, but OG recorded a grand total of 36 kills and 78 assists while keeping their deaths to a minimum of 11.
Meanwhile, Topson showed why the community has been dubbing him as a god, but this time as Pugna who notched the highest kill of the game for the second consecutive time at 17. He also dealt the most damage to heroes and to buildings, on top of scoring the game-high gold-per-minute and experience-per-minute.
Ana Immortalizes Carry IO
With their backs against the wall, Team Liquid entered the eventual final game of the series by letting the momentum-empowered OG pick up ana’s notorious carry Io. Up until that point, the Australian wonder boy still has to lose a game with the hero after playing it five times throughout the entire tournament.
During the early parts of the game, Team Liquid looked to be the very first team to give the carry Io its very first loss. The Bristleback, Chen, and Omniknight combo by The International 2017 champions to knock on their enemy’s top high ground as early as 19 minutes. However, after successfully fending off Team Liquid’s push, OG proceeded to march down mid and never looked back.
The window of time between a plausible game five and OG making history as the first-ever two-time world champions was only a little over four minutes. The presence of N0tail’s Abaddon and Ceb’s Guardian Greaves-equipped Timbersaw were too much for Team Liquid to handle. As a result, Ana’s Io remained undefeated while Topson’s Diffusal Blade-equipped Gyrocopter ended the game with the game-high 10 kills after Miracle called gg in the 24-minute mark of the game.
With their historic win, OG walked away with $15,616,844, the lion’s share of the biggest prize pool in esports history which stands at $34,322,744. In addition to being Dota 2’s first-ever two-time championship, N0tail, JerAx, ana, Ceb, and Topson are also the top five highest-earning esports athletes with $5-6 million of winnings each.
