EG upset Spirit to stabilize themselves at the Arlington Major

Evil Geniuses have had a rough tournament so far. On day one, they lost every single game they played. They dropped series to both Aster and Boom. Some of the games looked winnable, but EG couldn't close it out. And again today it looked bleak for EG. They were up against the TI-winning Team Spirit who have started off the tournament with flying colors. But it seems today, the spirit of Gaben was on the side of EG at the Arlington Major.

The game one draft saw Artour "Arteezy" Babaev playing an uncommon hero for himself. It was the new meta-hero Lone Druid. EG went meta but also saved some comfort picks for their boys. Andreas "Cr1t-" Nielsen got to play his Tusk and Abed "Abed" Yusop got his signature Puck. Meanwhile, Spirit went for their own meta picks with a Dazzle for Yaroslav "Miposhka" Naidenov and a signature Void Spirit for Alexander "TORONTOTOKYO" Khertek. Spirit looked to hit non-stop aggression with their line-up and to choke out EG before the Lone Druid could do its building damage.

For the majority of the game, it was all Spirit. Arteezy could not catch a break with the combined might of Sprit's offensive capabilities. The amount of vision gained from Illya "Yatoro" Mulyarchuk on his Monkey King and from Miroslaw "Mira" Kolpakov on Zeus was invaluable. EG could not hide. By 30 minutes there was an 11k gold lead for Team Spirit.

Spirit continued the onslaught as they picked off all of EG's heroes and won team fight after team fight. As they looked to close out the game, they even killed Roshan one last time for good. But that's when the "misclick" incident happened.

Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko tipped Yatoro, apparently on accident, and the bloodbath began. After getting a key blackhole on the Spirit heroes, EG killed Yatoro twice. They wiped the entirety of Spirit apart from Magomed "Collapse" Khalilov. And then EG realized. Nobody on Spirit had saved up for buyback. EG was free to enter the Dire base and win the game off the back of one fight.

In the second game it was Spirit who went for a more unconventional draft. They picked a carry Sniper for Yatoro. they also put Collapse on Batider in the offlane, which has not been in the meta for awhile now. EG again put Abed on his signature Puck, but put Arteezy on another unconventional carry, Spectre. They also brought out a hero that has been rising in popularity, Chen, for Tal "Fly" Aizik. Both the teams seemed to settle in for a longer game with their choices.

EG had an excellent early game with Nightfall dominating on his Viper. Taking up as much farm as he did he was top of the net worth chart early. Evil Geniuses kept up with some early pressure, moving around the map getting pickoffs, and pushing into towers. Nightfall continued to demolish anything that came in contact with him.

Abed danced around enemies as usual, helping seal the deal on key kills. Team Spirit still showed some signs of life and got a few team fight victories to close the net worth gap. In one instance, Mira stole the Aegis and shard from EG and they took a decent fight until Abed brought the hammer down. In the end, Evil Geniuses were able to secure the win.

This win stops the bleeding for Evil Geniuses. Meanwhile, Team Spirit still looks good to make it out of the group even with this loss. EG still has a long way to go in the Arlington Major to be able to secure a direct TI invite. Will they make it out of the group? Will they go far in the playoffs? Stick with us here at esports to find out.