Tundra dyrachyo on grand final return: “It feels good to be back in a grand final, especially when you’re losing 2-0 then come back 3-2”

Reverse sweeps in Dota 2 are probably more common than in other games like League of Legends or Counter-Strike 2, but as we’ll soon hear from Anton “dyrachyo” Shkredov, pulling it off at a major grand final is no less satisfying. The newest member of Tundra Esports helped his team make the comeback against Team Falcons at FISSURE Playground Belgrade just a few days ago, so I was keen to sit down and have a chat with him about how things have been going.

We talked about how he ended up with Tundra, who he’s looking forward to playing against at BLAST Slam 2, and how he prefers to win every game he plays in.

Patrick: Congratulations on the reverse sweep at FISSURE Playground Belgrade. Huge win.

It’s only been about a month since you joined Tundra Esports and you’ve already played in a grand final. How does that feel?

dyrachyo: It feels good to be back in a grand final, especially when you’re losing 2-0 then come back 3-2. I’ve never experienced that before, and so it’s just an amazing feeling to win like that. I’m happy.

Patrick: To be honest, watching you guys go down 0-2 in the wee hours of the morning from the Philippines where I live, I thought it was over for sure.

dyrachyo: Yeah, I’m sure many people thought it was over. I mean, you can expect it when you go down 0-2, but sometimes something changes. You know how it is. We drafted some good picks that are also comfort heroes for us after game 2, and things started to turn around.

Actually, I wanted to ask about that game 4 in particular. What in the world happened there? You guys just crushed Falcons.

dyrachyo: They made some mistakes in the draft, but honestly it was because bzm got first blood on Monkey King. When you’re a melee hero playing against Monkey King and he gets first blood, the lane is just unplayable for you at that point. We also had one of our best hero combos in the form of Phantom Assassin and Warlock, and we’re just diving them the whole time. We’re smashing them in every lane, and we just played better overall in game 4. We did make some mistakes as well, but nothing too big. Just a few little f***ups, but we ended the game real quick.

Patrick: It was just under your complete control from then on. Was pretty amazing.

Since you’re coming from that win, and knowing that that was your first LAN win with Tundra, how do you think it’ll affect you going straight into BLAST Slam 2?

dyrachyo: First of all, I need to get some sleep, because I didn’t get to sleep yesterday (February 2nd). But I think we just need to keep playing normal Dota. Nothing’s really changed [between FISSURE Playground and BLAST Slam 2]; anybody can win, anybody can lose. So, we just need to keep talking about the games, expect that nothing will come easy, because if you lose one playoff series here, you get eliminated. So you cannot lose.

Patrick: You guys are in group A with BetBoom Team, Talon Esports, Team Liquid, and Yakult’s Brothers. Who are you looking forward to facing the most?

dyrachyo: I don’t really care, because you have to face every team in your group anyway, right? So, I don’t really care who we’re playing first or second. I just want to show some good Dota, have better communication, and snowball against people so we look much stronger than them. Snowball through the laning stage, then through the mid game just close things up and win in 20 or 25 minutes. If I can do that, I’ll be happy.

Following up on you being new to Tundra, has it been easy to build strong relationships with your new teammates?

dyrachyo: I’m not sure if I’ve built them [outside of the game] yet, but in-game, we’re talking a lot about Dota. We’re talking a lot about how we want to play, what should we do, that kind of stuff. And it was not hard [getting right into that]. I think everyone has their opinion trying to help each other, because we share the same goal: to play our best and win. Because why are you even playing if you don’t want to win, right? That mindset helps us a lot.

Patrick: Do you guys do anything together outside of playing Dota?

dyrachyo: Not really. For FISSURE, we came to boot camp, played some qualifiers, then the tournament started and then we finish it and we didn’t even get to sleep. We fly out for BLAST Slam 2 right after. So we don’t have much time to go anywhere, because the schedule is tough and everything is pretty close to each other. But when you’re playing a lot like this, you need to find the balance between taking a break and playing, otherwise you can burn out. So you have to be careful about it.

Can you tell me about the process of you joining Tundra? Were you invited by them or did you approach them?

dyrachyo: After TI13, I kind of wanted to try to playing with them, and then some random things happened and suddenly I’m not playing at all. I then get messaged by zai, he invites me, I tell him to wait one week before giving him the answer. After that we just met at the boot camp before the qualifiers for DreamLeague Season 25 and ESL One Raleigh, and we just start playing together. During the holiday break I didn’t play any Dota at all, and basically zai just asked me if I wanted to try playing with them, and I said, “Yeah, why not?”

Patrick: And you’ve already started off on the right foot and on such a high note too. I saw that you played zero pubs before joining the team. What did you do to prepare yourself and shake off the rust after such a long break?

dyrachyo: Yeah, I was in Dubai with my girlfriend for my vacation, and I wasn’t going to cancel any of my plans just to play some pubs. I was just chilling, to be honest. When the time came to fly over to boot camp, I just started playing like normal.