PGL Wallachia Season 5: Grueling playoff day sends Tundra and Spirit to losers

With eight of the sixteen teams now out of the way after the Swiss group stage, the playoffs at PGL Wallachia Season 5 are now underway.

The first day of play in the bracket stage saw teams go through three long, exhausting best-of-three series, with only one match being a 2-0 sweep.

They’re Gamin’ (Gladiators)

The playoffs started off with Gaimin Gladiators vs. Tundra Esports — a classic Western European matchup second only to Gaimin versus Team Liquid. Tundra grabbed the first game in this series in a hurry, thanks to Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov and his signature solo mid Beastmaster. Combined with Remco “Crystallis” Arets’ Monkey King and Martin “Saksa” Sazdov’s Batrider, bzm controlled the pace of the game basically all throughout, not allowing Gaimin to even play Dota 2 to begin with.

But like I said in my power rankings for this tournament, the Gladiators are rapidly improving, and are starting to figure things out after looking really bad in the early part of this competitive season. They bounced back big time in the second game, bringing out the Quinn “Quinn” Callahan Shadow Fiend to great effect. I mean, the guy was all over the place, scoring 13 kills and posting zero deaths on his way to one of his best games on the hero.

Not to be outdone (even though he had less than half the kills), Alimzhan “watson” Islambekov followed suit as Ursa, getting 6 kills of his own thanks to a blistering 12 minute Battle Fury timing. This was followed by a 14 minute Blink Dagger, and from there it was just a matter of running at Tundra who had no way of slowing Gaimin’s mid game down.

The third game was a bit of a weird one, because while Gaimin held a pretty significant lead for about 30 or so minutes, things swung back in Tundra’s favor after watson and Erik “tOfu” Engel got caught out as Gyrocopter and Marci, respectively. Things settled down for a bit until around the 38 minute mark, when a full scale teamfight broke out close to where the Gaimin tier 2 tower was.

HOW DO YOU LOSE THAT????? pic.twitter.com/12jGu8z6Rt

— GG | Gaimin Gladiators ⚔️ (@GaiminGladiator) June 26, 2025

Tundra had the better of Gaimin in terms of positioning and initiation in this clash, but tOfu’s extremely clutch repositioning of watson’s Gyrocopter (seen above) using Marci’s Pick-me-up facet allowed the carry player to maximize his Flak Cannon (E) and Satanic usage, which in turn allowed watson to heal back up to full while dishing out tons of damage.

With such a devastating teamfight loss late in the game, Tundra had nothing left in the tank, and had to surrender their upper bracket position to Gaimin Gladiators.

XG On the Move

What a great day for Chinese Dota fans, because Xtreme Gaming are now guaranteed to finish at least within the top 6 at PGL Wallachia Season 5. They did this by putting a stop to the red-hot Natus Vincere — the one team that has turned heads throughout this tournament so far. Na’Vi finished third in the Swiss group stage, winning four matches and losing only to Team Spirit throughout their run in the preliminaries.

In fact, they actually had the first game in this series, and for a while I thought that they might actually continue their Cinderella run. Artem “Yuragi” Golubiev certainly made me think twice about continuing to doubt them, as his 10-0 Terrorblade performance in the first game alongside the 7-1 Puck by Philipp “Copy” Bühler was more than enough to get them the early advantage in the set. And this was in spite of Guo “Xm” Hongcheng’s best efforts (10 kills and two deaths) as Void Spirit, too.

XG would strike back in the second game, this time taking the Puck for Xm. Amazingly, he crushed Copy in lane, despite Puck not being that great on paper against Huskar. This gave him the 16 minute Blink Dagger timing he needed to impose his will on the map, which kept him and his team afloat even through the somewhat back-and-forth mid game.

It was a spectacular series, but unlucky for us. We fall to the #PGLWallachia Season 5 lower bracket. GG! #Dota2 #navination pic.twitter.com/uO8sEVlsUf

— NAVI (@natusvincere) June 26, 2025

It was, of course, Wang “Ame” Chunyu that would get XG across the finish line as Gyrocopter. With his 29 minute Butterfly timing, he would go on to pair Xm as the squad’s two primary damage dealers, and from there it was a simple matter of picking their spots against a draft that had no late game power.

Speaking of having no late game power, Na’Vi once again picked a lineup that had none of that, opting to go for the mid Tiny for Copy and the carry Abaddon for Yuragi. Things proceeded as one might expect: they held their ground in the laning phase and in the mid game, and were looking to close the series out before XG could mount a comeback.

What ensued was something that could only be described as utter chaos. Both teams traded the lead back and forth with hectic teamfighting, and honestly things didn’t look very good for XG despite their supposed late game draft advantage. They were making some crucial mistakes in five-on-five encounters, allowing Na’Vi to hang on by a thread as the game approached the 45 minute mark.

It was actually then that the game swung heavily in Na’Vi’s favor yet again, as they held a 10,000 gold lead 53 minutes in. They tried their best to push and end the game from there, but their draft just couldn’t compete against a lineup with Sniper and carry Omniknight. An unfortunate result for them, knowing how close they got to moving on in the upper bracket. They will instead have to try and survive in the lower bracket, first against Tundra Esports tomorrow.

Liquid Welcomes Insania Back

Team Liquid started off this tournament taking on Tobias “Tobi” Buchner as a stand-in to replace Aydin “Insania” Sarkohi, who had gone off on a short break to attend to a personal matter. Insania just got back to the team yesterday, and boy was it a great return for the longtime Liquid member in their series against Aurora Gaming.

Aurora fired first with a draft that allowed Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko to get his hands on Sven, a hero that he’s been doing pretty well on as of late. With his Warcry-focused build in the laning stage, he managed to survive Jonáš “SabeRLight-” Volek’s Bristleback and Samuel “Boxi” Svahn’s Dark Willow long enough to get himself going in farm.

And that’s exactly what happened, as he rocketed to a 20 minute Black King Bar followed by a 25 minute Daedalus. Liquid absolutely had no idea what hit them, because Nightfall was just an unstoppable force from there.

mood game 2#PGLWallachia pic.twitter.com/1taTbMzJrX

— Team Liquid Dota (@teamliquiddota) June 26, 2025

With their backs already against the wall, Liquid had to come up with something fast in order to save their upper bracket berth. They pulled out the SabeRLight- Venomancer in game 2, and it was everything that they needed to secure the win and force a deciding game 3. It also helps that Liquid won every lane aside from the Venomancer one, especially against the Doom-based draft that Aurora went for. Michał “Nisha” Jankowski’s Monkey King and Michael “miCKe” Vu’s Tiny were all that they needed to close the game out from there.

With momentum now on their side, Liquid proceeded to tighten the noose around Aurora’s necks even further. Bringing out miCKe’s signature Nature’s Prophet, the entire team won every lane once more, giving Aurora zero chance at stealing the series from them. It was an utter shellacking, brought upon by miCKe’s 14 minute Mjollnir and Nisha’s moves around the map as Ember Spirit.

This time, they weren’t about to let Nightfall’s Sven just get out of hand, and so he was held to just five kills with five deaths on top of that. With Aurora’s confidence in the gutter, it was just a matter of keeping it clean for Liquid — who ended the final game with 44 kills to Aurora’s 14.

BetBoom, Shakalaka

Never let it be said that BetBoom Team can’t decide to show up when they feel like it, because that’s exactly what they did against Team Spirit today. The first game of their series was a great comeback effort from them, as they had more or less lost the laning phase to Terrorblade and Undying played by Illya “Raddan” Mulyarchuk and Yaroslav “Miposhka” Naidenov. Not a great look for BetBoom when you’re running a Templar Assassin draft, but what followed for Spirit was a collapse (yes, pun absolutely intended) of epic proportions.

📊 Playoffs – Upper Bracket Round 1
✅ @BetBoomTeam 2-0 @TSpirit_Dota2

BetBoom delivers a clean 2-0 and moves on in the Upper Bracket at 🇷🇴 PGL Wallachia Season 5 🐺

Team Spirit drops to the lower bracket.#PGLWallachia pic.twitter.com/oDuH9eQBaD

— PGL DOTA 2 (@pgldota2) June 26, 2025

They proceeded to make some uncharacteristic mistakes in teamfights, with Magomed “Collapse” Khalilov in particular missing point blank Spear of Mars (Q) casts left and right. This allowed BetBoom to take advantage and claw their way back into the game — something that you don’t want to do against Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko when he’s playing Templar Assassin. Danil “gpk” Skutin led the way in kills, scoring 12 for himself without a single death as Leshrac.

It was clear that Team Spirit were shaken up by the first game, because they got destroyed in the second without even putting up a fight. They looked kind of lost with their draft in this one especially, giving Dragon Knight to Denis “Larl” Sigitov seemingly to counter gpk’s Puck. Someone please give Spirit the memo that this doesn’t work anymore in the current patch, because gpk manhandled him in the lane with the help of the Curveball facet.

Matvey “MieRo” Vasyunin’s Lycan pick also helped a ton in BetBoom’s efforts to just run over Spirit in this game. He score 10 kills and hounded Spirit’s supports the entire game, ensuring that they could never get off the ground and assist their teammates effectively. The game ended in just under 34 minutes, and now I’m starting to get worried about where Team Spirit’s heads are at in this tournament.