Nigma Galaxy defeats OG in final-week thriller

Nigma Galaxy has defeated OG in a surprising upset victory to end their drought in the DPC WEU 2023. The hugely popular Nigma Galaxy org has struggled to find its winning form this DPC season, even with the addition of former OG player Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf. However, ATF showed no mercy in this series, demolishing his former teammates 2-1.

OG drew first blood in the series, picking up a victory, as Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov took over the game with his dominant performance on Invoker. But Nigma punched back, putting ATF on Slark, and letting him go to work. Having taken the hero away from Artem “Yuragi” Golubiev, ATF crushed on the slippery Slark pick.

Finally, in the deciding matchup, OG found themselves against a deceptive draft. With Naga Siren given off to the Support role, and Syed “SumaiL” Hassan on KotL in mid, OG was up against an early-game powerhouse, rather than the late scaling comp they might have expected. As a result, they lost early, and never really got back in it. Ultimately, it took 40 minutes, but this was a game in hand for much of the time.

The victory ends a two-week drought in victories for Nigma Galaxy. In fact, the team hasn’t won a competitive series since the end of the previous DPC season, with their previous most recent victory coming at The International 2022: Western Europe Qualifier against DGG Esports.

With the win, Nigma Galaxy is now on the precipice of avoiding relegation, but it all comes down to their final two games. With a win against Team Secret on Friday, Jan. 27, the team will successfully push themselves out of relegation to Div II. If they lose there, they’ll have a final chance in the last game of the season against Entity on Jan. 29. This will put them in a tiebreaker situation with Team Secret to avoid relegation. Jan. 29 will also likely see a plethora of other tiebreakers due to a recent rules change.

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