BLAST Slam 6 Malta day 2: Liquid improve massively, Tundra still best

Things are heating up at BLAST Slam 6 Malta, with the group stage about to enter its third day already. Day 2 had a ton more surprising results as far as the top-billed teams were concerned, with the one exception being Tundra Esports who are known to shine bright at this tournament series in particular.

Today we saw Team Liquid shoot up the standings from their position yesterday, which had them tied for 6th place with Team Falcons. Meanwhile, Team Falcons, Team Spirit, and MOUZ continue to tumble down the order, all three showing signs that they might not be in good form right now.

Liquid charge forward

Now that’s more like it, Team Liquid. After a lukewarm performance in the first day of proceedings, they’ve since bounced back in pretty convincing fashion. Although they kind of fumbled what should have been a pretty easy win against MOUZ (and therefore their chance to move into the top 2), they’ve looked much better overall in both their drafts and their moment-to-moment gameplay.

The @nishadota Storm Spirit is a beauty to watch! 🤩#LetsGoLiquid pic.twitter.com/GjC0XmitKF

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) February 4, 2026

Tomorrow will be another big test for them as they chase for an automatic berth in the playoffs. Having to fight it out in the play-in stage is something that they’d very much like to avoid, and I’m sure their fans agree with me on this. More matches for them to play just means more opportunities for them to throw away their progress, after all.

But at least for now, their spirits are nice and high after a great run today. I’m hoping they can carry that over to tomorrow.

Slip ‘n slide

As I mentioned, three of the teams that I had high hopes for coming into this tournament are still struggling in the group stage. Spirit in particular look like they don’t even want to be here. I’m particularly disappointed at Marat “Mirele” Gazetdinov’s performances thus far, with his awful showing as Dragon Knight against Xtreme Gaming today being arguably the worst example.

Losing to current day HEROIC also should not be happening to a team with this much talent in their roster. I get that Santiago “TaiLung” Agüero Gustavo is supposed to be some sort of superstar mid laner, but he’s only been with HEROIC for about half a month and change. Surely Spirit’s experience and superior talent level should win out nine out of ten times?

Mirele shouldn’t even be the reason why they’re losing so badly. They’ve played with him twice as a stand-in for Denis “Larl” Sigitov now, so the fact that they need a substitute here shouldn’t affect them so much. But it is, and losing Airat “Silent” Gaziev as their coach doesn’t help things, either.

MOUZ, meanwhile, deserve to be in the position they’re in. They could be tied with HEROIC at three wins and four losses right now, which wouldn’t be much better, but at least they’d be at the fringes of skipping the last chance playoff stage. Instead, they decided to completely disrespect REKONIX today by refusing to ban Disruptor and Kez against them, and they got punished hard for it.

the REAL Crazy Frog pic.twitter.com/WKU5w94tVX

— OG (@OGesports) February 4, 2026

Lastly, there’s Falcons, who are looking rather disorganized thus far in the group stage. Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak is normally the poster boy for consistency from the solo mid position, but today he put in one of the most abysmal individual performances I’ve seen from him yet. Although he won his lane versus Erin Jasper “Yopaj” Ferrer’s Leshrac as Sniper — which is always supposed to happen anyway — he proceeded to put up a stinker the rest of the game.

Not even Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf could carry Malr1ne this game, despite notching 13 kills as Timbersaw and recording more than 750 gold per minute. Oliver “skiter” Lepko has also added quite a lot of dead weight to Falcons’ campaign so far, and he really hasn’t done much to impress in general. Mathematically speaking, they’ve probably lost their chance at skipping the play-ins at this point, unless they somehow put in a perfect performance tomorrow and the teams above them lose a bunch of games.