CIS squad, Virtus Pro, are one of the favorites to take the Aegis of Champions, but failed to take two games off Chinese squad Royal Never Give Up.
With Gyrocopter and Invoker picks in the first game, VP proved to be too strong for RNG, who lost to Vici Gaming in an earlier series.
The first game was really close, while the CIS squad looked dominant in the first game, the gold lead was pretty slim, at times only up 2,000 gold even at 32 minutes.
However, the game ended quite suddenly after two team fights took place, with RNG tapping out after Roman “RAMZES666” Kushnarev’s Gyrocopter proved unstoppable thanks to Invoker’s Alacrity buff.
The second game played out quite differently, this time, with VP swapping out Gyrocopter, but mostly keeping to a similar strategy with Invoker.
However, with RNG focusing on shutting down Pavel “9pasha” Khvastunov’s Axe, and Zhang “LaNm“ Zhicheng on fire with his Mirana, RNG slowly built up a commanding lead.
A big play by 9Pasha’s Axe, catching three heroes in his Berserker’s Call, saw VP make some headway in the game.
VP slowly chipped away at RNG’s lead, with back and forth team fights. In the end though, it just wasn’t enough and RNG managed to take one game back to tie the series.
Be sure to check out our coverage of The International 2019 Group Stage for more TI9 action.
