Another day of The International 2017, another roundup of the biggest stories from the day! After an up-and-down Day 1, Day 2 brought a lot of teams back to earth while allowing others to bounce back. Here are the standings:

But what stories were told on Day 2 beyond those win-loss records? Read on and find out.

LGD.Forever Young Won’t be Outdone by its Sister Team!

The breakout star of Day 1 was LGD Gaming but its sister team, LGD.Forever Young, stole its thunder on Day 2. After opening up the group stages with a 4-0 performance, LGD.FY kept rolling with a phenomenal Day 2 by rattling off another six wins, advancing its record to a perfect 10-0.

Just as impressive as their win-loss record was their strength of competition. While the ongoing group stages have seen some teams pad their records against second-tier competition, LGD.FY’s Day 2 saw them sweep Invictus Gaming, Cloud9 and Virtus.Pro.

While LGD.FY actually entered TI7 looking fairly shaky, they have transformed into one of the best in the business. If their success in the group stages translates to the main event, they could easily make a run to the finals.

Nyx Assassin Helps Take the Fun Out of Dota 2

The Day 1 group stages meta seemed to be a throwback to TI4. The tower-eating Pugna spearheaded the return of blitzkrieg Dota, which led multiple teams to sub-20 minute high ground pushes.

Things slowed down on Day 2, however, and a big part of that was mana-burning bug Nyx Assassin. The once-upon-a-time Nerubian Assassin established itself as the latest power player in the Dota 2 meta, and currently owns a nearly 80-percent winrate, courtesy of its dynamic teamfight skills and ability to ruthlessly harass supports and mana-dependant cores.

Will Nyx continue to be a power player by the time the main event comes around? Maybe, maybe not. But his potency to this point in the group stages is a strong testament to how quickly the meta can swing, and makes it easy to get excited about what new strategies and heroes will become vogue over the next week.

Infamous Belongs at TI7

Few were expecting much out of Infamous at TI7 and rightly so. South America as a whole has struggled to even qualify for any major LAN tournaments and on the rare occasion where they end up playing for real money, they have consistently fizzled out. The inclusion of the region, quite frankly, seems rooted in the region’s high upside as a revenue generator, rather than anything to do with it being home to high-quality Dota 2 teams.

Infamous’ presence felt like a token gesture to the region to keep the financial cogs greased.

On Day 2, however, the Peruvian squad proved that they belonged at the event by splitting series with Fnatic and Team Empire. Despite ending the day with a ho-hum 3-5 record, the fact that they have been able to take wins off of multiple teams is a huge feather in their cap.

They’re almost certainly not going to end up in the top four of their group. Heck, there’s a decent chance that they could end up being sent home before the main event. Still, they have performed well enough to inspire confidence entering the new Major/Minor tournament era.

iG.Vitality Plants the Seeds of Chinese Dominance

Newbee is well-entrenched as an elite-level Dota 2 team. Invictus Gaming? They got a direct invite to The International for a reason. LGD Gaming and LGD.Forever Young have both proven themselves as powerhouse performers in the group stages.

...But what about the fifth Chinese team at TI7? What about iG.Vitality? On Day 2, they showed that they’re not out of place among their constituents with a 3-1 run that saw them sweep LGD Gaming and split their series with Team Secret.

Now standing at 5th place in Group A with a 4-4 record, they have the chance to push their way into upper bracket seeding. If they can, and if their countrymen can hold onto their spots, China will be on place to dominate the TI7 standings.