This article is part of our Dota 2 Recap series.
Day 3 of the MarsTV Autumn finals has now wrapped up, sending two teams home and setting the stage for the final day of competition.
In the upper brackets, the trend from the group stages held and the two top teams, Evil Geniuses and Newbee, both advanced. The OG vs. Newbee series was relatively disappointing. After taking a dominant Game 1 win on the back of Anatham "ana" Pham's Morphling, OG seemed to completely fall apart. The next two games were an exercise in frustration for OG fans. In Game 2 Gustav "s4" Magnusson went for the risky offlane Puck, and got destroyed for it. In Game 3 it was ana's turn to feed, racking up an incredible 12 deaths on his Sniper. Throughout all of this, Newbee managed to play calm and measured Dota 2. Newbee will match up against Evil Geniuses, the first place team from Group B, in the upper bracket finals.
Evil Geniuses vs. Team Secret felt like a much closer series. In all three games, both groups put together total team efforts, but ultimately Evil Geniuses was able to pull away with a 2-1 series win. This new EG unit seems to be succeeding where past iterations of the team has failed, namely having both Artour "Arteezy" Babaev and Syed "SumaiL" Hassan on the same team. Team Secret's games have been extremely interesting during this event. It is clear that this new Secret roster has potential, but that potential will be tested as the group faces LGD Forever Young in the lower bracket. On the bright side for Secret, they took an easy 2-0 win over LGD.FY in the group stages.
The first of the eliminated teams at MarsTV was MVP Phoenix, dropping 1-2 to Vici Gaming. This new MVP roster looks like a team without a vision. They are still trying to play the same style they did with Pyo "MP" No-a and Lee "FoREV" Sang-don on the team, but it isn't working anymore. Kim "Febby" Yong-min seems to be having trouble taking over MP's spot as the second carry alongside Kim "QO" Seon-yeob, and Kim "Velo" Tae-sung and Lee "Reisen" Jun-yeong clearly still need time to adjust to this new roster.
LGD Forever Young finally managed to win a series when it mattered most, saving themselves from elimination. Instead, the second team to go home is iG Vitality. LGD.FY looked very strong Friday, in what was also notably their first match against another Chinese team. Something seems to come alive in Zhang "xiao8" Ning when he has to battle his own countrymen, and they looked like a brand new team. Saturday they have to battle Team Secret again, but this time for their tournament lives.
