Fnatic vs OB.Neon: Fnatic must take points

South-East Asia’s first DPC league of the 2021/22 season continues on Thursday, December 16. Fnatic and OB.Neon will meet in the only match of the day in the elite division.

DPC SEA 2021/22 Tour 1: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament from December 01, 2021, to January 22, 2022. The top eight teams from the SEA region will battle it out for $205,000. On top of the cash prizes, the teams will also fight for three entries to the majors and the crucial DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

Southeast Asia is still going strong, with no sensations. On the one hand, well behaved elite newcomers and those who miraculously got a slot in the elite this winter, but one thing for sure is that Fnatic didn’t wow them at all, falling twice to SMG (0-2) without playing more than 30 minutes on either map. It’s not even the loss to SMG that’s astounding, but the sloppy and awful play of one of the major's main contenders. So it’s also not their main DPC league rival... The match against TNC Predator (2-0) should have been a test, and Fnatic coped with their opponent. The match with TNC was important in terms of confidence, but then came the game with BOOM (0:2), which showed all the weaknesses in the game of the legendary tag. Having lost the second game out of three, the Fnatic team was in a difficult position. The guys have no margin for error.

The renewed Fnatic squad accomplished their main goal last season, qualifying for the TI10 via the tough Asian qualifiers. After that, the guys arrived in Europe to prepare for the year’s main tournament and did not do well in those games.

The Fnatic team performed extremely poorly in the majors in Singapore and the second DPC league. They won the first Asian DPC league but lost twice in the majors without a chance and quickly dropped out of the play-offs without getting a single DPC point for their performance. In League Two, they failed to qualify, finishing fourth and losing in the replay to Execration.

After their success in qualification, the boys took part in the BTS Pro Series Season 7: Southeast Asia, where they became the tournament’s vice-champion. In Europe, the Fnatic team found it extremely difficult. It is difficult to evaluate their performance at TI10. The Asians finished in 9th-12th place, leaving the tournament in the second round of losers, where they lost to eventual TI10 champions Team Spirit (0:2).

After returning from Bucharest, the squad went on holiday without playing any official games. There were changes in the squad. Armel, an experienced player who played for TNC Predator for more than three years, took over as midfielder, while Jaunuel, a star at OB Esports x Neon, took over as number five.

The Filipinos started the new DPC cycle with a game against BOOM (0-2). Although the second map was close, one of the favourites, the Neons, couldn’t do anything. Last week’s game was Execration (1:2), which was arch-rival with the aim of survival in the elite division of SEA at all, but losing the crucial match sent the OB.Neon team to the bottom of the table, and now play against the evil Fnatic...

The OB Esports x Neon squad has undergone big changes this summer. The main players moved to BOOM, while the Asian organisation only got Mikoto, who played briefly for the Neons and moved to Talon Esports after the ninth BTS season, in the opposite direction from the Indonesians. The new Neons are something of an experiment that should prove itself by the end of this year, or perhaps even the entire first DPC season. But this is just my guess, and so far, the guys participate in every tournament in a row and do not get much glory.

After TI10, this team was one of the first to play in several parallel Tier-3 tournaments, replacing its carry. The current number one is Filipino Palos, who joined the team from Execration. In addition, before the DPC season, OB.Neon added to their ranks an Indonesian double, Mamang Daya, who played for Army Geniuses for a long time. A failed BTS also provoked the lads to switch players at the fifth position, the newcomer being Filipino Abeng, who returns to his home turf after two years.

Yes, the playing form of the lads is definitely in order, the tone they maintain every day. The Filipinos finished the group stage of the ninth BTS season a step away from the top net. They lost the fourth line to Nigma due to a failed face-off that opened this group stage of the tournament for them. That defeat was the only one for the squad, but the new neons can’t boast much about wins at BTS either. Army Geniuses and Omega Esports won and drew five more times.

Fnatic will win this game with a handicap ( -1.5) on the maps; odds on this are 1.85. It’s a must-win game for the favourites, and Neon’s team has been playing awful so far.

The total of frags of two teams on the first map will be over 47.5; the odds on it are 1.50.

Team Fnatic’s frags handicap on the second map will be -9.5; odds on it are 1.83.