In the first-ever ZOTAC Cup Masters, which was held to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the ZOTAC Cup, Newbee were crowned the inaugural champions. After a back-and-forth final at Computex Taiwan, the Chinese team took home the lion’s share of the $100,000 prize pool.
Road to the Final
Newbee began the tournament as they meant to go on, topping group A with two wins out of two. In their opener, the side dispatched Digital Chaos with an impressive 1-0 victory, before following this up with a win over iG Vitality with the same result.
The first spot earned them a direct place in the semi-finals, where they faced the new Fnatic squad. While the Malaysian team managed to surprise them in game one, Newbee soon pulled themselves together and dominated the following two games to grab the aggregate win.
The Grand Final
Newbee’s last hurdle came in the form of a vastly renovated Team NP, hungry for their first tournament trophy.
In the first game, both teams centered their drafts around their key players – Team NP went for EternalEnVy’s signature Ember Spirit, while Newbee had Sccc on Shadow Fiend. Overall, Newbee forced their enemies to fight and adopted quite an aggressive approach. Despite their lineup being very well suited to team fight, Team NP was never really able to land a wombo combo through the use of their ultimates. Newbee managed to contain the enemy Ember Spirit quite well and it was one of their keys to the victory.
Going into the next round, both teams kept some of their hero choices from game one. Team NP found a solution for the Disruptor, with MSS on Legion Commander, supported by pieliedie’s Io. NP went for a more split-pushing lineup, with the Ember again alongside the Phantom Lancer, while Newbee had a hard-hitting Sven to accompany the nuking potential of Lina. The game went back and forth for both sides; however, this time NP used the kiting potential of their heroes to equalize the score.
Game three was the least contested, and shortest, in the series. Team NP established an early advantage, but thanks to some great individual plays from Kaka, Newbee kept themselves in the mid-game and later turned things around in their favour. Each mistake from NP was punished heavily, as Newbee had a great pushing power lineup and managed to finish the game before the 30-minute mark.
The 72-minute final game thriller was a spectacular culmination of the series. Newbee were in the driving seat in the early game, but NP managed to hold up and, thanks to the Troll Warlord, were able to attempt a high-ground push as early as 20 minutes into the game. As the game progressed, Newbee’s cores (Queen of Pain and Lifestealer) were becoming stronger. After many team fights had gone both ways, Newbee gradually started to prevail in latter clashes of the game. Killing NP’s Troll Warlord first was crucial and in the final two encounters they managed to do so and thus put an end to Team NP’s hopes for their first trophy.
