The spicy outcomes in the single elimination bracket at BLAST Slam 1 are already showing up this early, initiated by South American team Heroic. The reigning, defending PGL Wallachia Season 2 champions, who haven’t looked good competitively since then, upset Team Spirit in a big way in the first round of the King of the Hill format, guaranteeing themselves at least a top 8 finish from here.

BLAST Slam 1: Heroic Knock Team Spirit Out

The series between these two squads went the distance at three whole maps, with the final one in particular being one of the best individual games we’ve seen at BLAST Slam 1 so far. And although Team Spirit set the tone early in the matchup by winning Game 1, Heroic answered back with force in Game 2, thus evening things out before the series itself got away from them.

A Truly Heroic Comeback

Game 2 in particular felt like a huge momentum shift. Yuma “Yuma” Langlet’s Slark was simply immaculate, to say the least, carrying Heroic to victory off the back of some truly world-class play at the position. By the end of the 56 minute contest, Yuma had dished out almost 61,000 points of damage as Slark, which translated to 21 kills and just four deaths for him.

At one point in the late game, he even had as much as 350 total agility to his name thanks to Essence Shift (E) and the ridiculous teamfight lengths at that point. Truly the stuff of Team Spirit’s nightmares.

Team captain Matheos “KingJungles” Santos Jungles Diniz and coach Igor “kaffs” Furtado Guimarães Estevão turned up the heat in Game 3, seemingly sensing weakness over in the Team Spirit camp. They drafted Huskar for João Gabriel “4nalog” Giannini Santos, thus signaling to Team Spirit that they wanted to play fast and end things quickly in order to move on in the bracket.

This didn’t really come to fruition as the game actually lasted just over an hour, but it did end in their favor anyway primarily because of Yuma’s stunning play as Magnus and Elvis “Scofield” De la Cruz Peña backing his entire team up as Clockwerk. Seriously, the kind of disruption and chaos that these two provided in Game 3 cannot be understated, and was definitely what allowed Heroic to overcome a slightly more favored team in this series, even with no Invoker on the field.

And so, Heroic will advance in the bracket, and face PARIVISION in the next round on November 28th. They’ve got a long road ahead of them if they want to bag another major LAN victory for South America, but this is the first step in that journey. I think they’ve got what it takes to place at least within the top 4 here given their performance versus Spirit.