Xtreme Gaming pick up steam at ESL One Birmingham 2026

Color me actually surprised, because Chinese team Xtreme Gaming are making a serious case for themselves at ESL One Birmingham 2026.

Not only did they eliminate MOUZ from the tournament yesterday, they did the same thing to Team Spirit — one of the teams that I personally thought would at least finish within the top four spots.

Pied pipers

I honestly didn’t expect XG to still even be in the tournament after their first game against MOUZ in the lower bracket yesterday. With Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng popping off the way he did on Sand King in game 1, I thought that the Chinese squad would simply roll over and die. Lesser rosters would have, after seeing themselves get held to 12 kills while the other team ran all over them with 38. It was that ugly.

But, I guess XG isn’t a lesser roster, because they looked like a completely different team in games 2 and 3 thereafter. They had the right answer to MidOne in game 2, whose Ember Spirit was hampered plenty by Xu “fy” Linsen’s Dark Willow. Without a Black King Bar or any other way to dispel himself at all, MidOne was simply unable to really do much in teamfights.

It helped plenty that Wang “Ame” Chunyu seemingly ate a good breakfast for this series, because his Weaver game was the kind of stuff that carry players dream about every day. A 12 minute Desolator followed by a Linken’s Sphere nine minutes later? That’s how you know you’re rolling on Weaver. And when Ame is rolling, so too are the rest of XG usually.

Exterminated vermin

MOUZ drafted themselves into a hole that they could not get themselves out of in game 3, with a rather confusing Wraith King pick at the 23 spot for Remco “Crystallis” Arets. Meanwhile, they seemingly forgot to ban Leshrac, a hero that is rising in popularity in Patch 7.41 — and they paid the price for it. Cheng “NothingToSay” Jin Xiang turned back the clock with his Leshrac performance, scoring 16 kills and really terrorizing MOUZ throughout the entire game.

When NothingToSay is making these kinds of plays with this kind of confidence, the rest of his team feasts as a result. He’s always been this kind of mid player, where he needs to win his lane and then proceed to do something with the advantage in order to prop his teammates up. Thankfully, he didn’t choke this one away, and there was really nothing that MOUZ could do to stop him and his buddies. The final score: 39-10. Yikes.

MOUZ are in deep trouble right now, I’m not going to lie. They’ve consistently underperformed at several tier 1 tournaments now, as if they had exhausted all of their strength winning PGL Wallachia Season 6. By MidOne’s own admission in his interview with ESL, their confidence at Birmingham was at a six out of 10 at best. But after this result, it’s probably at a two or three now. Don’t really know where they’re going to go from here, but I can’t imagine it’s anywhere good.

Exorcising the spirit

XG didn’t let the fact that they had to play two best-of-three matches on the same day faze them at all, as they went into their next series with a good bit of confidence in tow. Ame said it best in his post-game interview from the MOUZ series: when it comes to XG versus Spirit, it’s either Spirit owns them, or they own Spirit back.

For the most part, that’s exactly what happened in this elimination series. Spirit got the better of them in game 1 by first picking Alchemist for Illya “Yatoro” Mulyarchuk — a hero that has quickly become the most obviously broken pick of the patch. The fact that Alchemist can give Aghanim’s Scepters to his teammates without sacrificing his own game (thanks to the changes to Greevil’s Greed in the new patch) is just too much to deal with right now, and it showed plenty in this game.

First it was Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov’s Primal Beast. Then, Denis “Larl” Sigitov’s Slardar, followed by Nikita “panto” Balaganin’s Jakiro. All three of these players get handed Scepters by Yatoro this game, and that’s how they flipped the script after XG grabbed a small lead in the laning phase and in the mid game. GG go next, you got Alch’d.

Begone, foul beast

Banning Alchemist in the second game did plenty to help XG stay in this series, and so did first picking Leshrac for NothingToSay. The latter just looks so good right now in his hands, and he is winning pretty much every lane matchup with it as well. He won versus Larl’s Sniper in this game, in fact — a matchup that absolutely should have been Sniper favored.

We sadly must say goodbye to @TSpirit_Dota2. Thank you for the incredibly entertaining dota! 🙌#dota #dota2 #ESLOne pic.twitter.com/wQDQa4UT2a

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) March 28, 2026

And thanks to that, NothingToSay got himself an 11 minute Blink Dagger, which he used immediately to destroy the rest of Team Spirit. And with fy’s newly buffed Spirit Breaker in the mix, there really wasn’t much that Larl in particular could do to farm safely. If he ever showed his face on the map, NothingToSay and fy were there to shut him down.

This performance as Leshrac came just in time, too, because Ame wasn’t having a fun time in the lane as Spectre. But this was as typical of a Spectre game as it usually gets: lose the first 20 minutes, get a Radiance, then press Haunt (R) to win. If NothingToSay didn’t play so well, though, I can’t imagine that XG would have won this game given how far behind Ame was at the start. But he did, so it was on to game 3.

Another one for the ages

And boy, was this game a doozy. These two teams played an elimination game for over an hour, with the final net worth graph looking like a roller coaster track when looked at from the side. This game had it all: tense moments, actual throws, and of course, Lin “Xxs” Jing being the best player on Xtreme Gaming. His Slardar this game saved XG from giving away their massive lead, and without him, I might not even be talking about his team still being in the tournament at all.

Of course, it didn’t help Spirit that Larl was making some really poor decisions late in this one, either. I know he was playing Void Spirit, one of the most elusive heroes in all of Dota 2, but that kind of slipperiness doesn’t do much good if he’s diving into five heroes alone all the time like he was in this game.

Some final words to the fans from panto 🥹 #dota #dota2 #eslone pic.twitter.com/nqUpfXV26h

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) March 28, 2026

Not having their old captain Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov very visibly affected Larl in particular, as his stabilizing presence was sorely missed. At the risk of disparaging panto (which I absolutely do not intend to with this take), he’s just not as good as reining his teammates in during high stakes situations like game 3.

This is another result where Spirit will be undoubtedly disappointed in themselves. They are much better than this on paper, but consistency is starting to become a real issue for them this season without Miposhka on board. On the other hand, XG are really building momentum now, and might sneak into yet another top 3 at the rate they’re going.