T1 punched its ticket to The International 10 after handing top Chinese squad Team Aster with a 2-0 beating in the upper bracket of the WePlay AniMajor, Wednesday night.
With the victory, T1, who now has a total of 970 Dota Pro Circuit points, became the fourth team to qualify for the most prestigious Dota 2 event – joining Evil Geniuses, Virtuous.pro, and Invictus Gaming.
The South Korean squad also clinched its spot in the second round of the upper bracket and will face the winner between the Quincy Crew-NoPing Esports upper bracket match-up on Friday.
“Yeah, we’re excited. I’m very happy for my team because our four players it’s their first time,” said T1 captain Carlo “Kuku” Palad in the post-match interview.
“We know that we need to win this one series to qualify for TI but my coach and I, we just kept saying to my teammates that don’t mind the result and let’s just play it game after game.”
The 1-2 punch of Kenny “Xepher” Deo (Enchantress) and Carlo “Kuku” Palad (Broodmother) kick-started T1’s dominant Game One outing after a strong showing at the top lane during the laning phase.
Xepher constantly hounded Zhang “LaNm” Zhicheng’s Nyx Assassin and Du “Monet” Peng’s Terrorblade while Kuku had a free lane all for himself. The 24-year-old position-four support managed to get a kill on both LaNm and Monet as early as the four-minute mark of the match.
With Aster’s carry behind by a huge bulk of gold, there was no one to contest T1 carry Nuengnara “23savage” Teeramahanon’s Morphling late in the match as the number one Chinese squad was forced to call GG in the 33:42-minute mark.
Xepher finished with five kills and 12 assists without a single death while 23savage posted a perfect 7-0-7 stat line. Kuku chipped in a game-high 13 assists along with two kills and two deaths.
On the other hand, Monet was held to just three deaths and four assists along with a total net worth of 17,266.
Karl “Karl” Jayme’s Magnus then teamed up with 23savage’s Lifestealer in Game Two to completely shut down the Chinese squad.
The Thai carry ended up with six kills and five assists without a single death while the Filipino midlaner, who put up a number of well-executed Reverse Polarities in the match, registered four kills, a death, and seven assists in the match.
Meanwhile, Monet continued his woes in Game Two as he only tallied two deaths and three assists playing Medusa.
The loss relegated Team Aster down the lower bracket, where they will face Filipino powerhouse TNC Predator in a win-or-go-home series tomorrow at 11 pm.
