Esports Update: The CIS region was dominant in the European and CIS Qualifiers for the World Electronic Sports Games in Barcelona. The tournament was dominated by CIS teams, with two Ukrainian and one Russian side making it to the semifinals. In the end, it was the Russian outfit AntiHype that secured overall victory and deservedly claimed the $40,000 winners’ prize.
Their success was not much of a surprise considering the team featured three players from the esteemed Virtus.pro – Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev, Pavel “9pasha” Khvastunov and Alexei “Solo” Berezin. The trio were joined by the talented Vladimir “RodjER” Nikogosyan from Na’Vi and Igor “iLTW” Filatov from Team Spirit.
Road to the Finals
AntiHype did not lose a single game in the tournament – both in the Group Stage and the Playoffs.
Their run to the Finals began from Group C, where they were drawn in the company of Royal Bandits (Turkey), UAshki (Ukraine), Team Albatross (Poland) and mousesports (Greece). AntiHype dominated each of these encounters and won all four best-of-ones, finishing top of the group with four wins and no defeats as a result.
This saw them start from the quarterfinal stage in the best-of-three Playoffs, where they eliminated another Turkish team, ANT E-sports, with a 2-0 scoreline. They then went on to meet Team Ukraine in the semifinals, who were arguably their toughest opponents so far. Despite the 2-0 victory, fans on both sides were biting their nails throughout both games.
The Finals
The Greek representative mousesports were waiting in the Finals, having had a tougher time of it in the Playoffs with two 2-1 victories (against Ultima_Thule and UAshki). The two teams had faced each other in the Group Stage, with AntiHype winning this clash, and history was set to repeat itself here.
Game One
Mousesports went for a beefy line-up in Game One, while the Russians opted for heroes which were better suited to the laning stage. The encounter was quite even until the mid-game, with both teams initially engaging in skirmishes and securing kills. AntiHype made sure that RAMZES666’s Luna was getting enough space to farm and kept her from dying in the early game though. This gave them an advantage and even though mousesports were winning most of the fights during the mid-game, one successful encounter was enough for RAMZES666 to raze down two lanes of enemy Barracks. The Greeks fought hard until the end, but the Russians’ edge did not slip and they closed out the game successfully.
Game Two
The Greeks went for another heavy melee line-up in the second game, while AntiHype yet again favoured a crowd control roster, this time with a heavier emphasis on team fighting. Mousesports entered the mid-game with kill advantage, having outperformed their rivals in the early game. With skirmishes galore and everything on the table, the Russians gradually started to make better use of their mobility and crowd control to overcome mousesports in team fights. As a result, AntiHype started outperforming their opponents and set the tempo in the late game. Getting control of Roshan and doing timing pushes, they eventually secured the clash and with it the series.
Russia’s Dream Team
AntiHype dominated the opposition throughout the tournament and were worthy winners. In general, their picks gravitated towards heroes with good team fight potential, crowd control and ability to split push.
Finding ways to get into the enemy base and moving around the map were more of their strengths. The team do not fear losing skirmishes and even when things are seemingly in the hands of the opposition, AntiHype can easily turn things around with a single successful team fight or neatly executed split push in order to secure objectives.
The Russians rotated and experimented with roles quite frequently, which meant their enemies struggled to form a game plan against them. RAMZES666 and 9pasha regularly swapped their roles – 9pasha as a carry and RAMZES666 as an offlaner (as opposed to their usual positions) – with deadly efficiency and this resulted in some notable performances from both players. 9pasha’s stellar plays on Weaver and Nature’s Prophet can serve as textbook examples of how an offlaner can become the number one core hero in the line-up.
RAMZES666 was arguably the most versatile player on the roster. Typically a hard carry, he dismantled enemy teams in the mid role, as well as an offlaner. Winning lanes as a Broodmother may not sound impressive, but his performance as Axe in the semifinals was a truly dominant display. As a carry, RAMZES666 would either be an efficient team fighter or an impeccable timing objective taker.
Alongside 9pasha, the traditional mid is iLTW, one of the rising stars of the CIS region. The Team Spirit player is mechanically gifted, which he very clearly demonstrated when he had to play Tinker. Equally capable of using playmakers or farming cores, iLTW was invaluable in team fights.
Although not partners outside of this team, the support duo of RodjER and Solo demonstrated great synergy. The two of them also swapped position 4 and 5 responsibilities successfully. Solo does not normally demonstrate his hero skills as most of the time he plays lane supports with limited playmaking abilities. His Clockwerk and Shadow Demon skills demonstrated that he is quite competent in the position 4 role.
He was complemented by RodjER, who is a great roamer and played well as position 5 support. RodjER makes great early rotations and often played the role of initiator in team engagements. The Na’Vi player is normally quite active in the early stages of the game and aims to deliver an advantage to his team by moving around the lanes and scoring kills, with which he can be quite prolific.
Lots of hype for AntiHype
It did not take long for AntiHype to gel as the team’s core had already played together for quite some time. Virtus.pro’s trio play at the very top level and so it is hardly a surprise that this team did so well. Not losing a single game in the tournament is a statement in itself and being tactically versatile as they are, any opposition would have to play to their top level to defeat them. AntiHype consequently shape up as one of the strong tournament favourites in the Main Event with team synergy, skill level and ability to make various hero line-ups work.
