BLAST Slam 4: Tundra lay the MOUZtrap as Falcons lay waste to HEROIC

The quality of the Dota here at BLAST Slam 4 has been nothing short of amazing. Now, after wrapping up the semi finals games, we have our 2 teams locked in for the grand finals taking place tomorrow.

Game 1 — Bathed in Shadow

The first series of the second day started off well in MOUZ’ favor, showing that they were ready to carry the momentum from the first day. They made sure to take advantage of Tundra’s drafting mistakes in the first game, particularly by putting Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng on Shadow Fiend against Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov’s Dragon Knight. Not a great matchup for the DK, that’s for sure.

Not only did MidOne crush bzm in the lane as expected, he went 11-0 this game, flexing his sheer confidence on one of the hardest heroes. There was even a moment where he saw Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko walk up high ground at the Radiant triangle (MOUZ’ side), and he just let Requiem of Souls rip at the exact timing he needed to secure the kill on Pure’s Lifestealer.

As for the rest of the game, he was just owning Tundra left and right. There wasn’t much in his way throughout the mid to late game, which meant that Tundra weren’t ever going to come back in this game anyway.

Game 2 — Bitten by the bat(rider)

With their backs against the wall and getting put in danger of elimination early on, Tundra had to dig deep in order to avoid an upset in this series. As it turned out, they didn’t really have to sweat this one out all that much, thanks in no small part to bzm’s performance as Batrider, which was complemented perfectly by Pure as Ursa.

Honestly, Tundra were able to get whatever the hell they wanted throughout most of this game. Mid Batrider combined with carry Ursa made sure that Remco “Crystallis” Arets couldn’t get much of anything done as Juggernaut, especially in the carry versus carry matchup. Enrage alone already makes things very difficult for Juggernaut, but add Overpower and Fury Swipes and you’ve got some real problems. Oh, and there’s the debuff immunity-piercing Flaming Lasso from Batrider just for good measure.

It didn’t help MOUZ that they completely fumbled the laning phase. They pretty much got destroyed, and from there the game was just a total uphill battle for them. All Tundra had to do was play clean, which they did in order to close the game out in 41 minutes and change.

Game 3 — YOU GET NOTHING, GOOD DAY SIR

Is there truly anything that Neta “33” Shapira can’t do? The third game had his fingerprints all over it, as his Axe was just running completely rampant over MOUZ’ lineup. I say this even though MOUZ actually held a small lead through the midgame, thanks to MidOne’s great start as Queen of Pain which then led to plenty of successful ganks for them.

Pure’s questionable performance as carry Abaddon this game had me thinking that MOUZ might slowly inch their way to victory. He was often out of position, giving MOUZ a few opportunities to pick him off and delay his item timings. 

But once bzm came online on his signature Invoker, it was time for Tundra to enact their gameplan. Between Berserker’s Call from 33’s Axe and Disruption from Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon’s Shadow Demon, landing Cataclysm was just a matter of getting a good initiation. They even used Cataclysm to scout MidOne out whenever he hid in the trees, which made it trivial for the rest of Tundra to just jump in and lock him down.

33 then just had the time of his life in the late game, chopping heads left and right on his way to a 16-2 scoreline. The big bad Axe was simply unstoppable at this point, forcing MOUZ to tap out before 40 minutes had even elapsed. Tundra are therefore moving on to the grand finals of BLAST Slam 4, with a chance to put in a hat trick after winning the two previous editions of the tournament.

HEROIC vs. Team Falcons

Game 1 — Falcons make an undeniable statement

The reigning International champions came to play in the first game of their series versus HEROIC, completely dominating the game from start to finish. I mean, Enchantress for Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun, Weaver for Oliver “skiter” Lepko, Ringmster for Andreas Franck “Cr1t-“ Nielsen, and Pangolier for Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf this early in the series? Talk about giving Falcons a layup in the draft. They settled in from the get-go in this one, and enjoyed a massive gold lead just 15 minutes into the game.

The position 3 Viper pick by HEROIC for Cedric “Davai” Deckmyn was interesting, but it just looked completely foolish by the end of the game thanks to the way Falcons. HEROIC tried to rush Falcons down given the Viper pick, but it’s hard to speed a team like this up. You have to beat Falcons at their own game, because they just won’t let you disrupt their usual gameplan.

Game 2 — More of the same

I really thought HEROIC might be able to get some work done in this game with Wisper and Yuma picking up the Leshrac and Abaddon respectively but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Once again, Sneyking Chen was out scaling Davai’s Pangolier before 40 minutes into the game and it was all over very quickly from there.

So with that, we’ve got a Tundra Esports vs. Team Falcons grand finals set up for tomorrow and if his post game interview with Slack is anything to go off it seems like ATF at the very least is ready for them already – “I mean I hope to get to destroy them…I hope I shatter their dreams”