Nigma had a rough ride to the finals this weekend in Kyiev. After being eliminated from both the major and minor qualifiers, they were one step away from being eliminated from WePlay when they got knocked out of the upper bracket by none other than Secret.
And then things started to change. Win after win after win they made their way through the lower bracket eliminating teams like Attack Mode, Gambit and Virtus Pro, only to face up again against Secret in the grand finals, this time in a best of five.
First game of the series started out with a balanced draft and a lot of hope for Nigma who get their hands on one of their favorite picks – Io – only to have it all crushed by Nisha and his Morphling. Building on the first game, Secret did a show of force in second game with Nisha playing Batrider and ending the game with 0 deaths.
Things looked Grimm for Nigma headin into game three’s draft. Third time in a row they first pick Io, this time pairing it up with a Miracle Leshrac and a mid Outworld Devourer for w33haa. With everything timed and executed to perfection they end up taking game three without a sweat.
Game four and Secret start showing Nigma respect by banning the Io. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough on it’s own and Nigma with their Lifestealer end up completely dominating team Secret leading to a deciding game five after a 2 – 0 lead for Secret.
In game five both teams decide to change their drafts. Secret go for Lifestealer, Tiny, Pango, Snapfire and Shadow Daemon while Nigma pick a Leshrac, Faceless Void, Centaur, Nix Assassin and a Winter Wyvern. With the panel predicting the game going Secret’s way, it didn’t look very good for Nigma. Though pickup after pickup and a constant run at you gameplay meant that they were soon enough hitting high ground with their Void and there wasn’t anything that Secret could do. Nigma end the game in 25 minutes much to everyone surprize and take away the trophy and $130.000 in prize money.
Another one month break awaits Nigma now as they wait for the ongoing minors and majors – to which they failed to qualify – pass. Will they be able to maintain their form going into the next DPC event or will they have to build up momentum from scratch? We’ll just have to wait and see.
You can watch the games here: Game 1, Game 2, Game 3, Game 4 and Game 5.
