TI14 Playoffs: Tidebound and Tundra Crash Out on Day 2

TI magic is undeniable and more upsets are coming through at the playoff stage of The International 2025 (TI14). Heavy favorites Tundra Esports, who I ranked third overall in my power rankings heading into this tournament, are now out of the event thanks to one of the biggest upsets you will ever see in Dota 2.

They fell out of contention at the hands of South American squad HEROIC, who are looking incredibly poised and confident heading into the next round of the upper bracket. Seriously, these guys just pick whatever the hell they want and succeed with it, with Pudge now being their signature pick as a collective unit.

On the other side, Nigma Galaxy have hit an entirely new gear in the lower bracket. They completely crushed Team Tidebound in two games, showing a level of consistency that would have otherwise been unheard of for this squad before this point.

Heroes never die

HEROIC came to play at this International. They tumbled to the lower bracket yesterday thanks to PARIVISION, but bounced back huge today against one of the toughest teams out there. And like I mentioned earlier, they played their exact brand of Dota in order to beat Tundra 2-0, picking off-beat heroes where everyone else has been contesting the exact same five or so.

They played Pudge in both their wins, in two different roles. The first game saw Adrián “Wisper” Dobles pick the hero up at the offlane position, whereas Pudge went to carry Yuma “Yuma” Langlet in game 2. Either way, Tundra just didn’t have any answers to HEROIC’s drafting, and so they were caught off-guard two games in a row.

Huge props to Yuma in particular in the first game as well. This dude is cracked at Ursa. He made the difference in the first game, which proved an important step in not allowing Tundra to get into their usual rhythm.

On the other hand, Tundra played extremely poorly today relative to their usual performances. They looked incredibly tentative with their initiations, and made some awful decisions in just about every aspect of each game.

And, well, I still stand by the statement that Remco “Crystallis” Arets isn’t nearly as good as Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov anyway. In fact, he even gave Troll Warlord his first loss at TI14 as part of this series.

The stars align

I may be a Nigma Galaxy hater, but I have to give them props for such an incredible performance despite falling to the lower bracket early. Actually, that latter part was what I thought would be the start of yet another top 8 exit for Nigma, but they seemingly woke up today on a mission to not disappoint their fans for the 200th time in a row.

Instead, they went into the Barclays Arena with a different level of swagger in their steps. Both Syed “SumaiL” Hassan and Tony “No!ob” Assaf put on a show today, with SumaiL playing mid Muerta for both games and No!ob taking up the Lycan and Mars from the offlane position. Both of them were the absolute impact players that Nigma needed them to be, with No!ob in particular destroying Tidebound and their spirits.

His Mars play in game 2 in particular was extremely impressive, landing clutch Spears of Mars (Q) over and over again and saving his teammates with his Eul’s. He was 100% the MVP of this match. If Nigma have truly solved their issues with nerves, they might just unlock a new level of power that will allow them to finally break through to the podium at TI14.

As SumaiL said in his post-game interview with Nomad, he thinks Nigma “play better when [they’re] on the verge of going out”.