BLAST Slam 4 Grand Finals: Tundra Take Down Falcons in 5 Games of Pure Cinema

This was one of the books. Tundra Esports have ended Team Falcons win streak and taken the trophy at BLAST Slam 4. Here’s how the whole series went down.

Game 1 — Carry Venomancer??

Falcons clearly didn’t want a long series in the BLAST Slam 4 grand finals, as they basically busted Tundra’s doors down in the first game. They were unafraid to bring out degenerate strategies early in the grand finals, picking the position 1 Venomancer for Oliver “skiter” Lepko.

It worked ridiculously well, with skiter ending the game only 1,500 hero damage behind Stanislav “Malr1ne” Potorak’s Pangolier. He did have a massive advantage in terms of building damage though, which was instrumental in choking Tundra straight out of the map in the midgame.

The rest of the Falcons players were all having the times of their lives as well. Ammar “ATF” Al-Assaf, playing his signature Razor, was all over the place in this game. With nearly 650 GPM to his name from offlane, he was able to hit pretty much all of his item timings. His tankiness and ability to neuter Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko’s damage as Ursa meant that there was little that Tundra could do to stop them from simply running them over.

It didn’t help Tundra that Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov struggled mightily this game, dying more times than a Storm Spirit would like, which meant that he couldn’t get his Galvanize stacks up early enough. He had practically zero impact this game, especially once the Linken’s Spheres came into play on Falcons’ side. 

Overall a very clinical performance from Falcons as expected in the first game, and a tone-setting victory through and through.

Game 2 — Not a good Legion game, apparently

Another game, another insane offlane performance from 33. His Timbersaw ran completely all over Falcons in game 2, going 16-0 in one of the most awe-inspiring individual performances I’ve seen from him this tournament. Well, this, and the 16-2 Axe game that he had yesterday against MOUZ.

Picking the Faceless Void-Invoker combo for Pure and bzm worked wonders for Tundra, as they were able to pick their spots basically whenever they wanted for guaranteed kills. Not even skiter’s Weaver nor Malr1ne’s Primal Beast could do much about the control and instant burst damage coming from Chronosphere and Cataclysm, and anyone that survived the combination would just get cleaned up by 33 anyway.

I guess ATF’s assessment of this being a good Legion Commander game was completely off this time around. He and Andreas Franck “Cr1t-“ Nielsen got dumpstered in lane, and none of Ammar’s Duels looked particularly good. He was even forced to buy a Force Staff, of all items, thanks in no small part to Matthew “Whitemon” Filemon’s extremely irritating Clockwerk.

Game 3 — Sorry, zoo’s closed

There were four zoo heroes in game 3, with Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun playing the Chen, and Tundra picking three heroes that have some sort of minion or unit control mechanic in their kit. 33 had Lycan, Pure had Lone Druid, and Whitemon had Enchantress.

It was clear from the get-go that Tundra wanted to play old school rat Dota this game, something that their draft in particular was good at. They played mostly AFK for the entirety, refusing to group up as five, which was something that Falcons were completely ready to punish. 

Utilizing their absurd tempo revolving around Malr1ne’s Monkey King and ATF’s Doom, they took fight after fight after fight to Tundra, which meant that the zoo strat just fell completely flat on its face. I mean, the scoreline was 23-2 by the end of the merely 27 minute game.

Tundra definitely deserved to lose this one in the way that they did, because as we all know, split pushing isn’t really a thing anymore in Dota. Onto game 4 then.

Game 4 – Falcons win? No, Tundra. No, Falcons

I mean, these teams knew who they were playing in front of this game with a QoP v Puck match up in mid. Picking Morphling for Pure into ATF’s Mars was indeed a choice and one that worked out really well for Falcons in the early game.

Tundra were down but the certainly weren’t out heading into the mid game. They really capitalised on Falcons making very uncharacteristic mistakes while 33 pivoted his Timber build to include Blade Mail. From, this was such a back and forth game it was difficult to keep up but it all game down to a fumbled push by Falcons that saw them take top 3 tier and go straight for the throne.

Maybe it was overconfidence, maybe it was impatience but Falcons over stayed their welcome in the face of a respawning Butterfly/Satanic Morphling, a mistake that ultimately cost them the game. And with that, we went to game 5.

Game 5 – Seeing double

Game 5 of a Bo5 grand final is the perfect time to pick the exact same heroes, right? Well luckily both teams agreed with a draft that perfectly mirrored game 4. The game itself, however, told a very different story. This was far more even with Falcons unable to repeat their early game lead. In fact, it really remained very close until it wasn’t.

This time, it was once again Pure who took down Skiter’s Gyro and picked up the Divine Rapier, pushed into the dire base and stood strong against an onslaught of damage to finally take the title.