Team Secret were back to their winning ways after defeating rival European squad Team Nigma in a group stage match at EPIC League.
Secret showcased key performances from Ludwig “zai” Wåhlberg, Yazied “YapzOr” Jaradat, and Nigma’s former hard carry player, Lasse “Matumbaman” Urpalainen who dominated both games with Sven.
After an even laning stage from both teams, Team Secret took a slight gold lead advantage by controlling the map after claiming the Aegis of the Immortal on Matumbaman. Secret then looked to build on their lead by going for a Dire base siege, while the Aegis was close to expiring. Fortunately, for Nigma, Matumbaman played way too aggressively and dove the tier four towers, which led to him being Tossed into the Dire fountain.
As Game 1 progressed, Matumbaman’s Sven continued to scale into a true late game carry, while Nigma’s squad became too reliant on Amer “Miracle” Al-Barkawi’s Faceless Void to land clutch Chronospheres. Secret were aware of this, however, which led to Clement “Puppey” Ivanov’s Pugna and Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s Outworld Devourer being ready with the Decrepify and Astral Imprisonment that countered Miracle’s Chronosphere.
After claiming Roshan at the 41-minute mark, Secret handed the Refresher Shard to Matumbaman, which allowed their Sven to spam his Storm Hammer and cleave down Nigma’s heroes. This earned them a Game 1 victory.
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In the second game of the series, Secret decided to go with a similar hero lineup that revolved around Matumbaman’s Sven. Meanwhile, Nigma went with a Tidehunter on Ivan “MinD_ContRoL” Ivanov as the team’s main initiator.
At the 19-minute mark, MinD_ContRoL landed a picture-perfect Ravage on Secret, who were all grouped up in the Rosh Pit. But zai was in an ideal spot to drop a counter Black Hole that locked down Nigma. Puppey followed up with a blink Reverse Polarity combo on the enemy’s support heroes to secure the crucial team fight.
Matumbaman would then separate himself from the rest of the core heroes in the game by taking a 6,000-gold lead against Miracle-’s’ Slark. With the Empower buff from Puppey’s Magnus and an early farmed Daedalus, Matumbaman melted Nigma’s heroes, earning Secret a convincing Game 2 victory.
With the 2-0 series win over Nigma, Secret has now moved up to third place in the group stage standings with a 4-2 record. Meanwhile, Nigma fell to fourth place with a 4-3 round-robin score.
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