It appeared Vici Gaming was trying to use a pocket fifa coins strat in the Game 1 against Cloud9. Their first two picks were Clockwerk and Lina, seconds within each other clearly showing the team had a plan. The same happened later in the draft when Ancient Apparition was added without thought. It was a draft that showed confidence and bravado, but this quickly crumbled in-game.
Vici did well in the early game, but started to fall behind. The game was close on kills and towers, but there was a chasm on farm. FATA and EternaL EnVy took Shadow Fiend and Gyrocopter and got astounding farm. It appeared the game was over until a stunningly-terrible team fight resulted in a Cloud9 team wipe just before the 40 minute mark thanks to terrible execution.
What followed was a complete collapse. fy played a picture-perfect game on Rubrick, while Hao ran wild on Spectre once his farm caught up with Cloud9. That team fight at 40 minutes was a backbreaker. The end of Game 1 was the most exciting few minutes of Dota we've seen all International with both teams base racing and ultimately Vici cam away with the win.
There's only one way to characterize Game 2: Fun. Starting with the draft we saw a shock Sniper pick from Vici Gaming, while Cloud9 appeared to use an Undying/ Pugna pocket strat. It was the surprising Sniper pick that made the difference with Hao using it early to out-zone FATA on Shadow Fiend, and create space for ceaseless ganking of the mid lane. Sniper isn't in the meta largely because of survivability, but Vici Gaming found a way to protect him.
The second game never lived up the the excitement of the first. It was a stomp, www.hellofifa.com pure and simple. Now Cloud9 will need to plan their next move away from The International after a disappointing year.
