OG Esports faced off against Team Secret, one of the strongest lineups in Europe, in the DreamLeague Season 16 opening match and took the series in a convincing 2-0 victory.
OG Esports recently rebuilt the entire roster and focused on recruiting young up and coming talents, particularly in the core roles.
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ATF and Yuragi carried OG Esports against Team Secret
Team Secret pulled out an interesting draft in game one, with unorthodox picks in every role: Winter Wyvern offlane, Grimstroke in the midlane, and support Pudge to round it out.
In contrast, OG Esports stuck to their comfort picks. Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf picked Timbersaw, his most played hero with 960 pub games.
The Timbersaw pick worked brilliantly, as there was no solid lockdown or magic damage on the side of Team Secret. ATF was able to win in the laning stage, and leveraged that advantage for his team during fights.
ATF would frequently jump into five members of Team Secret without being punished, and create havoc, which allowed his team to come in for the cleanup.
Game two’s spotlight shone on Artem “Yuragi” Golubiev. Picking Templar Assassin as a carry is something that has fallen out of the meta, but it did not slow down Yuragi at all.
Maintaining top spot in networth the entire game, Yuragi was able to farm up while his team made space and gave him time to come online. Once he was ready, it was game over for Team Secret.
Thanks to the Aghanim Scepter, Yuragi was able to teleport to traps he laid down earlier, allowing him to assist the team anywhere on the map. This global presence allowed Yuragi to score a triple kill 28 minutes into the game.
Game two proved how dangerous the new OG Esports can be. With a kill score of 43-14, they denied Team Secret control of the map, forcing them to tap out at the 36-minute mark.
ATF was driven by a personal grudge against Puppey
After the game ended, the panel invited ATF for a post-game interview where he shared how they approached the game.
“I think we just enter with the right mindset, we just want to come, win and get off. Nothing special, very easy,” he said.
At high MMR rankings, players will often match up against each other due to the low player pool. ATF revealed that he had played against Clement “Puppey” Ivanov in pubs, and wanted to beat him in an official match.
“I just want to win this Puppey guy, he trash talks me so much. I need to tell him in ranked game ‘Hey I won you in official (game), stop talk’,” he said.
OG Esports made a huge statement with their brutal 2-0 victory over Team Secret. Time will tell if they can keep up this momentum up for the rest of the DPC season.
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