If there is any team in Dota 2 TI8 which has exceeded all expectation its team OG. After the roster changes or rather say some forced roster changes no one expected OG to perform in such a manner in which they have.
After Amer Al-Barkawi “Miracle-” left OG for team LIQUID, OG struggled to make a significant impact in major tournaments.in 16/17 season OG replaced CRIT, and MIRACLE with JERAX and ANA. Afterwards, OG seemed unable to maintain their rhythm, finishing The Manila Masters in 5th-6th place and failing to qualify for the main event of EPICENTER 2017. Nevertheless, they once again entered the year’s International as strong favorites for the title.
They started the 2017 tournament as favorites despite losing the best player in DOTA 2. However, in keeping with their slowdown from the few months prior, OG failed to make it to the upper bracket in the group stages and was ultimately eliminated by LGD.
For 2018 International valve introduces a DPC system for teams to qualify for the biggest tournament of the year. After an early exit from the ESL Birmingham things were looking for bleak for OG and things got even worse when S4 and FLY left the OG roster to join team EG, losing two of the founding members of the team OG was in shambles.
Having lost 2 main players 2 months prior to the 2018 INTERNATIONAL and being forced to the make rosters changes they were already was ineligible for an invite to The International 2018 or for the regional qualifiers. In early June 2018, with some time remaining before the qualifiers would began, the team was able to form a complete roster with Finland Finnish pubstar Topson joining and Ana returning to the team. As a result, 7ckngMad who previously worked as their coach would play in offlane and N0tail would move to the hard support position.
The addition of Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen has proven to be a trump card in this tounament.Every top notch team has a mid-player who can carry the team on his shoulders e.g VP,LIQUID,EG and PSG-LGD have Vladimir Minenko “no-one” ,Amer Al-Barkawi “Miracle-”, “SUMAIL” and Lu YAO “Somnus” respectively
“TOPSON” may not be on the same level as the other four are but he is surely on his way to greatness. If he can win this INTERNATIONAL-2018 in his first appearance his name will already be registered in record books of DOTA-2.
OG started the tournament as underdogs and after barely qualifying for the upper bracket they finished the group stage at 4th position, for the next round VGJ picked OG as their opponents as VGJ finished group B in first position, but little did they knew that these underdogs would perform at such a high level and play the best DOTA of their lives .OG continue to surpass the expectations and then they met EG in their next match of upper bracket. It was all too personnel for Notail who was also one of the founding members of OG along with S4 and FLY, Now that s4 and FLY were playing against OG loosing was not an option for Notail .and as they say ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man’ team OG outclassed EG send them to the lower brackets.
Next they faced the tournament’s favorites PSG-LGD, for the place in final .After a hard fought battle of BO3 matches OG cemented their place in this year’s final .They will face the winner of EG vs PSG-LGD in grand finals. Imagine the hype if they face EG again in the finals.
