BLAST Slam 3 Grand Finals: How Tundra Took Falcons Down

Tundra Esports are now back-to-back BLAST Slam champions, as they just finished off the BLAST Slam 3 grand finals three games to one. Facing Team Falcons in the championship match, they have proved once again that they are one of the teams to beat this season, even after swapping out Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov for Remco “Crystallis” Arets.

With this result, they are now firmly back at the top of the Dota 2 food chain. They are looking unstoppable once again, and it’s hard to imagine this team not making top 3 at least at The International 2025 in September.

Game 1 — An Out-and-Out Outplay

The first map was an example of what happens when you don’t bring your A-game to a LAN grand final: you get absolutely erased by a team like Tundra. Falcons just lost every lane, every teamfight, and even the draft and suffered a blistering 27 minute defeat. Definitely not what you want happening at the start of a five-game series, especially when your team hasn’t won a LAN since October last year.

Whitemon baits Falcons onto him and Tundra CLEAN HOUSE 🐐

📺https://t.co/FnOCwJvlNA pic.twitter.com/SwirB35NQM

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 11, 2025

On Tundra’s side, it was smooth sailing throughout the game. Crystallis, ever the sentimental one for his old Creepwave teammates, made sure to grab Razor away from Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf to make things spicy right off the bat. And, well, he had a whale of a time, making incredibly impactful moves even without much farm initially.

That latter part changed very, very quickly though. He was able to build himself a 16 minute Mjollnir, which is just insane timing for a farming item that costs 5,500 gold. From there, it was just a matter of Tundra pushing their massive advantage, with Crystallis running roughshod over Falcons alongside Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov’s mid lane Beastmaster.

Game 2 — Falcons Get Beaten Late Game

The second game went for quite a lot longer than the first, clocking in at just a smidge over 52 minutes. Crystallis once again got his hands on Razor, but honestly this time it was bzm’s Monkey King that really made the difference. Tundra got out of the laning phase on top, having won the offlane and drawing everywhere else, which allowed them to get a nice 5,000 gold advantage heading into the mid game.

Some disastrous teamfights swung the game back in Falcons’ favor, though only just. They held onto their lead for about the next 10 minutes, but relinquished it after Tundra hit another item timing.

At around the 40 minute mark, Falcons went for a desperation play that looked like it would be their big break in this game, thanks to Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak’s Rolling Thunder initiation as Pangolier. He managed to get bzm down to within an inch of his life, but bzm was able to escape thanks to Boundless Strike’s Aghanim’s Shard upgrade and the help of his team.

Falcons finally win the fight – but their base is gone 😓

📺https://t.co/FnOCwJvlNA pic.twitter.com/zWzpuPnenm

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 11, 2025

With the rest of his team behind him, Malr1ne was forced to retreat. He and ATF were already dead to rights, so they had to run with their tails between their legs to defend their base. Tundra managed to get mega creeps from there with another teamfight, although it did cost them all of their lives. I’m sure they were more than okay with this though, because they forced a ton of buybacks from Falcons in the same fight.

Interestingly, Tundra tried to push for the Ancient about 8-9 minutes later, and actually got punished for it because they didn’t seem to know what to focus on. It was a somewhat half-hearted teamfight and push, with one half of the team hitting buildings and the other hitting heroes. But even with that, it didn’t really matter in the end. Their advantage was just insurmountable at that point, and they sealed the deal a few minutes later.

Game 3 — Ursine Rage

With their backs now against the wall, Falcons had to dig deep for the third game in order to stave off elimination — and that’s exactly what they did. The 38 and a half minute contest was a hundred percent under Falcons’ control, as they won two out of three lanes and leveraged their early momentum to really crank up the tempo.

uh….you good, @AmmarAlassaf6 ? pic.twitter.com/bbcEp4xvuN

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 11, 2025

And they had to, because they drafted a Nature’s Prophet/Ursa lineup that wasn’t really going to work in an ultra late game situation. Kind of ironic considering how slowly Falcons like to play in most games. But this time, they weren’t interested in getting into a farming war with Tundra, who drafted Morphling for bzm and carry Underlord for Crystallis.

Once they had their Blink Daggers up and running, Falcons just looked to fight over and over, utilizing Malr1ne’s global presence as Nature’s Prophet to really put the game in a stranglehold. Oliver “skiter” Lepko played clean up as Ursa, mauling Tundra’s heroes left and right without mercy. And with no real answers to the breakneck pace that Falcons were playing at, Tundra simply had to surrender the third map, and with it their chance to sweep their opponents.

Game 4 — Tundra Survive the Falcons Synergy

Tundra would go on to close things out in the fourth and final gameat BLAST Slam 3, though it wasn’t exactly easy to do considering they gave a bunch of signature heroes over to Falcons. Jingjun “Sneyking” Wu was able to get Mirana for himself, which is already quite a big red flag for anyone facing Falcons already. But on top of that, they also got Dragon Knight for Malr1ne, and Tiny for skiter.

This draft worked really well in the early to mid game for Falcons, as they were able to easily set up Sacred Arrow combos for Sneyking with both Avalanche from Tiny and Disruption from Andreas Franck “Cr1t-” Nielsen’s Shadow Demon. They held a significant lead at around the 30 minute mark, and it looked like Falcons might have finally found the formula that would get them to the deciding game 5.

PURE CHAOS as @TundraEsports pull through and TAKE THE FIGHT 🔥 pic.twitter.com/FBnFlnPt2a

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 11, 2025

But some questionable plays from their end allowed Tundra to claw their way back into this game, particularly from Malr1ne who was always out of position away from his teammates. The fact that he had a Black King Bar didn’t matter much at this point, given that Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon was stuffing all of his TP attempts with Chaotic Offering as Warlock.

This, combined with Crystallis’ Phantom Assassin and bzm’s Invoker, were enough to turn the tide in Tundra’s favor. With some tight execution towards the end of the 56 minute game, they just kept the pressure on after capitalizing on Falcons’ critical mistakes.