And then there were four at the Esports World Cup for Dota 2, as the quarterfinals of the single elimination playoff bracket are now done and dusted. Tundra Esports and Team Falcons will advance to the semi finals. Tundra really had to earn it versus BetBoom Team and Falcons put in the clean sweep against Team Liquid.

Esports World Cup Dota 2: Tundra show clutch gene, Falcons take down Liquid

Forged by the cold

They’re not called Tundra Esports for no reason, I would think. These guys seem to have the kind of mental fortitude that gets tempered in the harsh cold of a tundra to begin with. They took the first game in their series even though BetBoom held a small lead throughout the mid game. At first, it looked like the Broodmother pick was going to bring it home for BetBoom, until Neta “33” Shapira went ahead and ruined the entire game for them.

How? He stole the Aegis, that’s how. With zero fear, he went into the Roshan pit as BetBoom were finishing up their kill attempt, and just swiped the Aegis without a care in the world. This gave Tundra all the leeway they needed, as they were able to just take space on the map without having to worry about 33 dying.

This also seemed to tilt BetBoom off the face of the earth, just as we talked about on our latest episode of Hot Takes. They just could not recover from such a bold play. They lost practically every teamfight, and with a heavily farmed Lycan running you down, that’s just not something you can come back from.

BetBoom answered back in the second game, this time exploiting their big draft advantage. For some reason, Tundra thought it would be a good idea to last pick Leshrac into all of BetBoom’s burst damage and control, which included mid Puck, carry Monkey King, and offlane Earthshaker.

Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov just couldn’t contend with all that damage, even with Kaya and Sange in tow. BetBoom just had several answers for him as well as Remco “Crystallis” Arets’ Razor, so they were able to tie the series in under 40 minutes.

Piano Man bzm does it again

The final game was very much in BetBoom’s favor for a very long time — over 40 minutes, in fact. 33 losing the offlane as Axe helped BetBoom seize control, and they led by as much as 10,000 gold 35 minutes into the game. But as if to redeem himself from Game 2, bzm went nuclear on his signature Invoker, especially against Pure’s heavily farmed Lifestealer in the late game.

bzm esports world cup
Credit: EWC

The man was a maestro, applying all the control and damage that his team needed to get back into the game. His incredible performance also allowed 33 to recover nicely, which 33 in turn used to buy himself a Force Staff at 34 minutes in. This proved to be a crucial adjustment given BetBoom’s lineup, which was able to freely cancel Blink Daggers with Queen of Pain, Batrider, and Dark Seer.

It also helped that Vitalie “Save-” Melnic was missing crucial Flaming Lasso (R) opportunities during Tundra’s comeback. Not something I would usually say about Save-, given his experience and stable play, but he was definitely lacking here.

Birds of prey

Well. This was not what I expected when I wrote the EWC power rankings out of the Liquid-Falcons series, because Falcons destroyed Liquid in both games.

Game 1 was actually quite uncharacteristic of Falcons, who have historically favored more late game-oriented lineups. This time, however, they opted to play at a breakneck pace, drafting accordingly to set themselves up nicely for mid game domination.

To that end, they gave Nature’s Prophet to Oliver “skiter” Lepko, Timbersaw to Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf, and Primal Beast to Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak. The plan worked to absolute perfection, especially because Liquid somehow thought it was smart to pick carry Windranger in 2025.

That build has long been out of the metagame due to the changes to Gleipnir, and it just wasn’t ever going to work out in a patch where Blade Mail is one of the most powerful items. They took game 1 easily.

The second game was no better for Liquid, as Falcons just ran with the momentum from the first game. Malr1ne went with the mid Beastmaster this time, something that he’s played a lot this season — and walloped Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s Queen of Pain with it in the laning phase. This afforded him a ridiculous 14 minute Aghanim’s Scepter, and from there the game was basically just over.

ATF and skiter definitely thought so, because they were just able to play off of Malr1ne’s early success with ease as Razor and Sven, respectively. It hardly mattered that miCKe was playing Templar Assassin, because ATF could just take away all his damage whenever he was disabled by Malr1ne’s Primal Roar (R). And while that was happening, skiter could just clean house in Liquid’s backline.