TNC Predator pulled a huge come-from-behind win in Game Two to kick-start its reverse 2-1 sweep of Team Aster to advance to the second round of the WePlay AniMajor lower bracket, Thursday night.
The top Chinese squad, who was coming off a 0-2 loss to T1 in the upper bracket, kissed their WePlay AniMajor dreams goodbye as they settle for a 9th-12th place finish.
After a huge blunder in Game One, TNC pulled out all the stops needed in Game Two to keep their AniMajor hopes alive.
Battered but somehow still alive after a rough laning phase, the Filipinos leaned on the steady Templar Assassin game of Kim “Gabbi” Villafuerte to prolong the match before Armel “Armel” Tabios’s Batrider, who struggled mightily early in the match, came in with a game-saving play entering the 54-minute mark.
With Team Aster hogging the Roshan pit, the 21-year-old midlaner jumped right inside just in time to kill Roshan and snatch the Aegis and the Refresher right under Team Aster’s nose.
Armel put up a team-high 20 assists along with two kills and five assists. Meanwhile, Gabbi had 10 kills, six deaths, and nine assists in Game Two.
Come Game Three, the 1-2 punch of Gabbi (Ursa) and Armel (Tiny) snowballed right into victory as they led TNC’s dominant 24-14 victory.
Gabbi put up 10 kills and nine assists against one death. Armel registered 10 kills and 10 assists against two deaths.
TNC offlaner Jun “Bok” Kanehara also had his moments in Game Three, delivering multiple well-timed Reverse Polarities to set up the plays for the Filipinos. He finished with 13 assists along with three kills and four assists.
On the other hand, Du “Monet” Peng, despite finishing with five kills, two deaths, and four assists, struggled to provide Team Aster with serviceable Chronospheres.
TNC will next face the winner between the lower bracket match of Evil Geniuses and NoPing Esports tomorrow.
