Bren Esports overcame Aura PH's surprise Diggie strategy to seize a 2-1 victory in the quarterfinals of the ONE Esports MPL Invitational on Saturday night.
Bren, the MPL-Philippines Season 6 champion, shrugged off an opening game loss caused by Aura's feeding Diggie strat and showed its true form in the next games to advance to the semifinals of the 20-team regional tournament.
The black and yellow squad of Francis "Duckeyyy" Glindro arranged a final four duel with Myanmar champ Burmese Ghouls for a chance to get a shot at the lion's share of the $100,000 (P4.8 million) prize pool on Sunday.
Aura pulled out its infamous Diggie tactic in Game One with Jaypee "Jaypee" Dela Cruz using the annoying bird to disrupt Bren's rotation while also providing vision.
Benedict "Bennyqt" Gonzales' Alice and Jaymark "Hadess" Lazaro's Lancelot unloaded the needed damage for the two-time MPL winner to carve out a 15-minute win.
Bren denied Aura its cheese strat by banning Diggie in Game Two while picking for themselves the Selena of Angelo "Pheww" Arcangel, Lunox of CJ "Ribo" Ribo and Claude of Karl "KarlTzy" Nepomuceno.
Pheww was all around the map to finish with a 7-2-7 kill-death-assist record, Ribo tallied 8-2-8 and KarlTzy provided the physical damage to register 5-4-12 as the PH king posted a 24-11 win in 16 minutes.
Again, Bren banned Diggie in Game Three and snatched Lapu-Lapu for David "FlapTzy" Canon, who joined forces with Ribo's Pharsa to pull off big outplays against Aura.
FlapTzy was the one tanking the damage while Ribo dished out the magic burst in crucial team fights that allowed Bren to seal the hard-fought series with a 26-19 triumph in 19 minutes.
