ESL One Birmingham 2026: Tundra and Yandex continue gapping everyone

Both Team Yandex and Tundra Esports took their opponents to school in the upper bracket at ESL One Birmingham 2026 yesterday, proving to everyone in the building that they are indeed the two best teams in the world right now.

Their advancement into the upper bracket final came at the expense of Team Spirit and Aurora Gaming, respectively — who will now have to contend with the possibility of an untimely elimination moving forward.

The Saksa effect

Although it took them three games to do so, Yandex put Spirit away in still-convincing fashion. And even with a new Dota patch in the form of Patch 7.41, they went with their comfort picks for most of the series, with Shadow Demon, Jakiro, and Void Spirit helping them make the difference in the match as per usual. They didn’t look the least bit hesitant or doubtful of themselves despite the unfamiliar environment brought about by the new patch, which is exactly what I expected from a team led by Martin “Saksa” Sazdov.

The two-time International champion just has a very obvious calming effect on his teammates. I suppose that’s just natural when you’ve seen everything that pro Dota has in terms of what it can throw at you. Granted, Yandex did try the now-broken Alchemist instead of going with their usual heroes in game 2 — which didn’t quite produce the result that they’d hoped — but they made up for the loss in game 3 by going back to what worked for them in game 1.

With their form being what it is right now, only Tundra can put a stop to them going all the way and winning two tier 1 tournaments back to back.

Lead into gold

I mentioned Alchemist above for a good reason: the hero seems kind of busted right now after the changes to his innate in Patch 7.41. Now, whenever Alchemist gives a teammate an Aghanim’s Scepter, he gets 6 gold added to all of his bounty bonuses from Greevil’s Greed. In addition, the max gold bonus from Greevil’s Greed also increases by the same amount.

This allows him to play much the same role as he did several patches ago, where he would allow his teammates to hit a fast Aghanim’s Scepter timing while not sacrificing their laning phase and mid game for it. In the case of the match between Tundra Esports and Aurora Gaming, the former abused this to the maximum.

The first Scepter upgrade of the series went to Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov’s Pangolier, gifted to him by Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko from the carry position. He then gave the second to Neta “33” Shapira, who definitely appreciated the free upgrade to Gush (Q). Pure then handed 33’s Largo the first Scepter of game 3, with 33 proving to Valve’s balance team that Largo’s Aghs upgrade had not been nerfed nearly enough in 7.41.

Normally, Pure’s playstyle requires him to be the explosive, fearless carry that jumps in first in order to pick off a key target before the fight begins. But he showed great versatility in this match, putting his ego aside and taking the back seat to his teammates by handing them Scepters. But with the way that Greevil’s Greed works now, he didn’t even have to do this for very long.

Recovering as Alchemist after rushing a Scepter is now much easier than it’s ever been, so Pure didn’t have to settle for playing 4v5 just so his teammates could have all the fun. They still needed someone do hit buildings, after all, and that’s exactly what he did in games 1 and 3.

I hardly even care that Aurora won game 2, nor do I care that they shot themselves in the foot with a botched Tormentor attempt that made it seem like they just glossed over that part of the patch notes. This strategy is obviously too powerful, and teams are going to have to burn bans just to keep Alchemist out of Tundra’s reach from here on. Hell, this will probably even apply to teams that aren’t Tundra Esports for the rest of this tournament, unless Valve put out 7.41b in the next day or two.