Natus Vincere, Team Liquid to face off for BLAST Slam VI title

One of the most competitive matches at the BLAST Slam VI event will get a rematch in Attard, Malta.

But with a lot more on the line this time.

In Saturday's semifinals, Team Liquid had little trouble with OG, winning 3-0, while Natus Vincere edged Team Yandex 3-2 in a back-and-forth affair to advance to the grand final on Sunday.

BLAST Slam VI is a 12-team Dota 2 event that pays $300,000 to the winner and $1 million overall. The event opened with three days of group play -- a round-robin, best-of-1 format in which each team played each other team once. The top two teams in the standings, Natus Vincere and OG, moved on to the semifinals of the playoffs.

The teams finishing third through eighth in the standings advanced to the play-in round -- four best-of-3 matches in which the winners advance to the playoffs and the losers were eliminated. The teams finishing ninth through 12th in group play competed in the last-chance playoff, another best-of-3 format where the winners advanced to the play-in round and the losers went home.

All playoff matches are best-of-5. The championship squad will receive $300,000 plus $100,000 in team earnings, while the runner-up will get $150,000 and $50,000 in team earnings.

Back on Feb. 4, Liquid beat Natus Vincere in a round-robin match that lasted 84 minutes.

On Saturday, Liquid took care of OG in 24 minutes on green, 38 minutes on red, and 85 minutes on green. Sweden's Michael "miCKe" Vu led Liquid with a 30/10/35 kill-death-assist ratio while John "Natsumi-" Vargas of the Philippines posted a 23/12/22 KDA in the loss -- including a 17/7/13 in the 84-minute finale.

The other semi was a different story as the teams alternated wins over the first four maps -- Yandex won in 34 minutes on green before Natus Vincere won in 24 minutes on red, then Yandex took green in 49 minutes and Natus Vincere answered in red with a 61-minute win. In the final map, the alternating wins ended as Natus Vincere won on green in 40 minutes.

Ukrainian Artem "Niku" Bachkur posted a 33/24/52 KDA and compatriot Taras "gotthejuice" Linnikov went for 35/18/33 in the win. Alimzhan "watson" Islambekov of Kazakhstan posted a monster 48/17/40 in the loss.

BLAST Slam VI prize pool

1. $300,000 (plus $100,000 in team earnings)

2. $150,000 (plus $50,000)

3-4. $60,000 (plus $29,000) -- OG, Team Yandex

5-6. $35,000 (plus $15,000) -- Team Falcons, HEROIC

7-10. $22,500 (plus $6.250) -- Team Spirit, Xtreme Gaming, Tundra Esports, GamerLegion

11-12. $10,000 (plus $2,500) -- REKONIX, MOUZ

--Field Level Media