TI14 Qualifiers: Xtreme Gaming dominate CN grand final

Xtreme Gaming just put out a huge statement performance in the International 2025 (TI14) Chinese regional qualifiers, dropping just one map throughout their blazing hot run in the tournament. They strolled into the qualifiers with a confidence that I didn’t think they would have, considering that their last major tournament appearance at DreamLeague Season 26 didn’t bear much fruit.

They faced Yakult Brothers in the grand final match, a team that they sent to the lower bracket in three games — one of which involved a bizarre QoP bug that forced PGL admins to roll back to an earlier game state. They then proceeded to sweep them in the deciding set, punching their tickets to Hamburg in highly convincing fashion.

Game 1 — XG put the mid game in a vice grip

Xtreme Gaming came out of the blocks fast in the first game, notching a stable victory in just under 39 minutes. They took Wang “Ame” Chunyu’s Sven in this game, while giving Void Spirit and Timbersaw to Guo “Xm” Hongcheng and Lin “Xxs” Jing respectively. This draft pretty much locked them into a gameplan that required them to finish the game before Yakult Brothers managed to get Jin “flyfly” Zhiyi’s Gyrocopter online. And that’s exactly what they did.

They capitalized on their timings to perfection, leveraging Ame’s blistering farming pace well. Xm and Xxs helped create plenty of space for Ame, with both players combining for 11 kills and keeping Yakult Brothers’ advantage to a minimum. That last bit was of course especially important, given how deadly Gyrocopter can be late game and how impotent Sven usually is at that time.

Once Ame had his Monkey King Bar, which he needed against the Radiance blind effect coming from Ren “old eLeVeN” Yangwei’s Brewmaster, it was go time for XG. Trading Xxs and Zhao “XinQ” Zixing (who was playing Earthshaker, by the way) in a teamfight at around the 27 minute mark, they got three crucial kills that broke the game wide open.

They would not look back from there, and their lead just ballooned straight out of control. Without the items necessary to fight Sven effectively, flyfly’s Gyrocopter was rendered basically useless for the rest of the game. Advantage XG to start the series.

Game 2 — Ame the Exterminator

The second game was quite a bizarre one to say the least, with Yakult Brothers going for a rat Dota style draft centered around flyfly on Templar Assassin, Ye “BoBoKa” Zhibiao on position 4 Terrorblade, and Chan “Oli” Chon Kien on position 5 Naga Siren. These three had a simple gameplan: use Song of the Siren to keep XG from moving, while Templar Assassin and Terrorblade (mostly the latter) would go up and hit buildings.

If you want to talk about a dishonest way of playing Dota, this draft was as close as it could have gotten to that. Nature’s Prophet no longer being the absolute menace he was in the previous patch means that teams playing rat Dota have to get creative, and that’s definitely what Yakult Brothers cooked up here.

It actually worked really well for most of the game. Oli, Emo, and old eLeVeN all proved to be enough of a distraction in most situations, forcing XG to answer them while BoBoKa and flyfly focused on taking objectives. This allowed them to hold onto the net worth advantage for literally the entire game, because they just weren’t losing much gold to teamfight deaths to begin with.

Unfortunately for Yakult Brothers, Ame was on Medusa, with more than 900 gold per minute to his name. Having such a farmed Medusa in their lineup allowed XG to just win every small skirmish that took place while BoBoKa was off ratting lanes, and also to counter push and base race as much as they wanted to. The game actually kind of devolved into base racing around the 45 minute mark, with XG almost taking Yakult Brothers’ Ancient then and there.

Backdoor protection kicked in for Yakult Brothers, but in the end it wasn’t enough. XG easily picked BoBoKa off as he tried to go all in on their Ancient, and the rest of Yakult Brothers just capitulated from there as they had no answer to Ame’s Medusa. XG had the series in a chokehold at this point, going up 2-0 against their opponents.

Game 3 — Open and Shut

Unfortunately for Yakult Brothers, a reverse sweep was just never in the cards for them this series. XG really turned up the intensity in game 3, showing their opponents that they were just out-and-out the better team in this matchup. The lack of reliable control in Yakult Brothers’ draft allowed XG to just run all over them this game, particularly with Slardar and Pangolier.

Basically every teamfight was a masterclass in decision making by XG, and it’s clear that Xm was having the time of his life on Slardar, his signature hero. His Slithereen Crush (W) usage in engagements was just immaculate to say the least, and Yakult Brothers were found scratching their heads at how to deal with his stuns.

The armor reduction from Corrosive Haze (R) also helped Ame plenty, as Drow Ranger always appreciates armor reduction due to how the Marksmanship (R) bonus damage works. Yakult Brothers were just never in this game to begin with, and so they will have to deal with the fact that they will miss TI14 entirely.

Overall a fantastic performance throughout the qualifiers for Xtreme Gaming. Although I predicted that Yakult Brothers would come out of this tournament, XG just proved they have the talent to overcome the fact that they hadn’t really been doing that well at major tournaments as of late. We’ll see them representing China alongside All Gamers Global (formerly known as Team Tidebound) in Hamburg.