Article written by Li "Alucard" Wei Jun and Lee "Matafleur" Wei Meng.
Team Zenith ended their European Tour with a bang, finishing third at the DreamHack Winter 2007 DotA Allstars competition held in Sweden.
While only finishing top 16 at the ASUS Autumn Open 2007, Zenith was recognized as one of the three teams to watch out for at DH Winter 07 along with MYM and SK.DotA.
Zenith did not disappoint, leveling much of the early playing field. They received a bye in the first round, and then proceeded to play Team LBO in the second round.
In this match, Zenith managed to pick a strong hero lineup which included Nerubian Assassin and Bristleback. The game very pretty much one sided in Zenith’s favour. Tofuboi even went AFK and left his Bristleback at the fountain for an extended period of time, eventually selling all his items and to buy mass couriers to ward LBO’s side of the map. LBO first thought that Tofuboi had pooled his items, until he sent all his couriers to their base.
Zenith won Team LAL in the third round and defeated Team Foona in the fourth round. Having stayed in the winners’ bracket up till the semi-finals, Zenith finally encountered their first real test in DH Winter 07, SK.DotA, the DotA team from SK-Gaming.
SK.DotA managed to pull ahead of Zenith, winning the first match in the series. Zenith managed put up a tough fight and leveled with SK.DotA after the second match, but lost the third match and the winners’ bracket semi-finals 2-1.
As DreamHack is played in a double elimination format, Zenith were knocked down to the losers’ bracket quarter finals. Zenith then played against Team LAL a second time, prevailing against them to move on to the loser bracket semi-finals against team Poddy’s Rampant Rabbits, which they also won, bring their DotA career full circle. Poddy was the person who first introduced Singapore players into IHCS.
Meanwhile, in the winners’ bracket finals SK.DotA were defeated down by Pack4DreamHack (MYM), setting up a second confrontation between Zenith and SK.DotA in the losers’ bracket finals
Although many wanted to see Zenith play against MYM on LAN in a competitive environment, it was not to be as Zenith was defeated by SK.DotA. MYM eventually went on to defeat SK.DotA to claim the first placing.
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