Team Liquid in early trouble, Tundra thriving at BLAST Slam 4 group stage

The first two days of the BLAST Slam 4 group stage are now behind us, with the early pecking order of this new Dota 2 season starting to take shape as the tournament rolls along.

Though this is just the first major event of the new year, we’re already starting to see how each club’s new roster stacks up against international competition.

Drowning out of the gates

Right now, it’s not looking great for Team Liquid, who just picked up Marcus “Ace” Christensen and Erik “tOfu” Engel during the post-International 2025 (TI14) roster shuffle. At first, I thought this was a slam dunk acquisition for Liquid, who were in need of replacements for Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek and Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi. Ace and tOfu make up one of the most consistent laning duos of all time, after all, so I immediately expected them to pair up as usual and pick up right where they left off with Gaimin Gladiators.

Despite a back-and-forth early game, we fall to @FalconsEsport! GG 🤝

Tomorrow we'll be back with 3 matches as we continue our journey in @BLASTDota Slam IV!#LETSGOLIQUID pic.twitter.com/sgVYKkitx6

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) October 15, 2025

But contrary to what I thought they’d be doing, Liquid have actually split them apart in the lineup. Samuel “Boxi” Svahn is now Ace’s new lane partner, while tOfu is now playing with Michael “miCKe” Vu. The bold move hasn’t really paid off thus far, Liquid have won only one map so far and lost three.

One of those losses was even against Execration, one of the worst teams in the tournament so far and one of the weakest teams on paper coming into the event. Of course, pretty much every team that tweaks their roster heading into a new season has to go through teething issues like these, and there’s still a long road ahead in this round-robin group stage.

Thus, there’s still time for Liquid to figure out how to best integrate their two newest players. At this point, I’m half expecting them to switch it up by putting Ace and tOfu back in the offlane like they used to do in Gaimin, although changing tactics so drastically in the middle of a major competition does carry risk. If not, they may just have to brute force their way through their issues and try to get through them the hard way.

The freezing Tundra

On the other hand, we’ve got the new look Tundra Esports, who are obviously enjoying the return of Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon to the lineup after missing out on TI14 due to visa issues. They’ve got the exact opposite record to Team Liquid, with four games and only one loss so far. They’ve been taking care of business through the first two days, dispatching basically every team that they’re favored against and only slipping up the once against Aurora Gaming.

This is a great start for them considering that they lost two members from the TI14 lineup over the roster shuffle, namely Remco “Crystallis” Arets and Martin “Saksa” Sazdov. But neither Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko nor Matthew “Ari” Walker have wasted any time getting into the groove with Tundra, as they have both stepped up in the absence of Crystallis and Saksa.

Not that I didn’t expect this from Pure in particular, who has played with Tundra before as a loaned player from his original squad BetBoom Team. He is more than a fine carry player just on his own, but having existing synergy with the rest of Tundra is certainly a big bonus given his return. As for Ari, I personally thought that he would far and away be the weakest link on this new roster, but he has proven himself to be up to the task to this point.

Now, there’s still the issue of keeping things going along smoothly for these two, of course, especially Ari. It’s one thing to perform well in the first two days of BLAST Slam 4, but it’s another to stay consistent throughout the rest of the group stage. Ideally they’ll avoid having to play in the last chance playoff and/or the play-in so they can look forward to Singapore right away, but there’s still lots of work to do.

How’s everyone else doing?

BetBoom Team have disappointed me thus far, posting a 1-3 record in the early goings. Their only win was against Liquid, who aren’t in the best of shape right now as I’ve already mentioned.

Falcons, though, are looking just as formidable as ever, with stand-in Satanic not even having to do much in the first day of the group stage because the rest of the team is just that good. Now that Oliver “skiter” Lepko is back from injury much, much sooner than anticipated, they might just lock up one of the direct seeds to the LAN semifinals at the rate they’re going.

As for the rest, it’s actually been pretty competitive between the teams I haven’t mentioned. Team Aureus are doing better than I thought they would at 3-2, and so are MOUZ and Na’Vi. There’s still plenty to play for over the next three days, and you’ll not want to miss much of it, for sure.