Xtreme Gaming catch fire at DreamLeague Season 27 playoffs

I did not in a million years expect this outcome: Xtreme Gaming are picking up steam at DreamLeague Season 27, tearing through the lower bracket of the playoffs by eliminating both Team Falcons and Tundra Esports in a single day.

They are catching fire very quickly, and exceeding everyone’s projections regarding their performance — including my own.

On the hunt

Beating Falcons in a best-of-three series is never easy, but you wouldn’t know that looking at how XG just dismantled them in their first series today. The first game was the Lin “Xxs” Jing show, as he stomped all over Falcons (literally) with Primal Beast. He and fy (playing Shadow Demon) formed a lethal combination in the lane, with Disruption (Q) and Disseminate (W) setting up for easy kills alongside Onslaught (Q) and Trample (W).

This allowed Xxs to secure himself a blazing fast 12 minute Blink Dagger, which pretty much set XG up for the rest of the game. Wang “Ame” Chunyu served as the follow through, with his 854 GPM on Kez fueling his late game and giving him the items he needed to deal tons of damage. Falcons folded after just over 40 minutes of play, looking completely impotent the entire time.

Things got even uglier for Falcons in the second game, as the contest itself didn’t even break the 30 minute mark. Every member of XG went ballistic in this game, especially Cheng “NothingToSay” Jin Xiang as Ember Spirit. Crushing Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak in the solo mid matchup, he secured a nine minute Spirit Vessel timing — which meant curtains for Falcons and their high health draft featuring Dragon Knight, Mars, Tusk, and Ursa.

Falcons just got shut out of this game completely as a result. XG got going and never stopped, on the other hand, helping them complete their first major upset of the day. Talk about earning your revenge from the International 2025 (TI14) grand finals.

The cold never bothered them, anyway

Up next was Tundra Esports, an opponent that I thought would just demolish XG given the difference in talent and recent results between the two squads.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Game 1 was all about the tempo-warping power of the Tiny-Night Stalker combination that XG drafted for themselves, which Tundra were completely ill-prepared for. Having Slark as the pick for Matthew “Ari” Walker of all people was bad enough because of Night Stalker’s Crippling Fear (W), but also because Dark Pact (Q) can no longer save him from Tiny’s Avalanche (Q) as per the buffs to it in Patch 7.40.

With the snowball rolling between Xxs and NothingToSay, Tundra soon found themselves choked out of the map entirely. They had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, something that Ame definitely appreciated as he took the space that was now available at this point to farm up a storm as Troll Warlord. There was nothing Tundra could do thereafter to prevent XG’s onslaught, forcing them to tap out in just under 32 minutes.

The second game was quite a bit more competitive, with Tundra’s much better lanes leading to a small mid game net worth advantage for them. The fact that Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov also trounced NothingToSay and his signature Tinker in lane had me thinking that Tundra would turn this series around and tie it up, but Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko’s awful performance as the carry Bloodseeker kind of invalidated that.

Meanwhile, Xxs was having the time of his life as Tidehunter, despite what his 3-4 kill-death score would have you thinking. His 16 minute Aghanim’s Scepter timing spelled doom for Tundra, as it was just so disruptive in teamfights for a lineup that really needed to be right on top of their targets in order to be most effective.

The final team to be eliminated today is @TundraEsports, having fallen to @xtremegamingcn 0-2. #DreamLeague pic.twitter.com/NhIdC76KCS

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) December 19, 2025

Not even Neta “33” Shapira could shore them out of the hole they found themselves in, because when you’re running against the tide and Tinker is on the other team, it’s really hard to make a comeback. Well, I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on anyone that watched day 2 of the playoffs, because Tundra actually ran a Tinker draft then and lost because Team Yandex managed to clutch it out at the very last second.

Xtreme Gaming are now guaranteed to finish at least fourth here at DreamLeague Season 27, but it doesn’t look like they’ll be satisfied with that result. They look hungry and determined to get as far as they possibly can at this tournament. With this kind of momentum, anything is possible — but they are waiting for two very tough opponents between PARIVISION and OG.