BLAST Slam 3 Playoffs: Aurora Gaming Send BetBoom Team Packing

After the hectic first day which encompassed the entirety of the group stage, the BLAST Slam 3 playoffs are now underway — and with this format comes early eliminations. Two teams have already been sent packing despite this only being the second day of the tournament, thanks to the single elimination nature of the bracket stage.

We’ve already had to say goodbye to Team Liquid, who were each  knocked out by Team Spirit after a full three-game series. And honestly, although this was a disastrous result for Liquid as far as BLAST Slam 3 alone is concerned, I wouldn’t put too much stock into their last place finish here overall. Liquid tends to rise and fall between tournaments like nobody’s business, and this just so happens to be another one of their “down” events.

But enough about Liquid — I’m here to talk about Aurora Gaming versus BetBoom Team. The Eastern European derby is always around the corner this season, though Aurora’s presence in this isn’t as common as, say, that of PARIVISION or Team Spirit.

Game 1 — Aurora Send a Message

The opening map of this series was an absolute statement and a half from the side of Aurora Gaming. A masterful draft from their side with the last pick Morphling to counter Danil “gpk” Skutin’s Ember Spirit helped Aurora take full control of this game almost from the outset. Giving Morphling over to Gleb “kiyotaka” Zyryanov was a stroke of genius — and even though he didn’t necessarily win the lane against gpk, he held his own long enough to hit level 6 in a timely manner.

the last second bash 😭 pic.twitter.com/M30QhKTuDz

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 7, 2025

This was when things really opened up for Aurora. By leveraging Morphling’s ability to turn into any enemy hero of their choice, kiyotaka turned BetBoom’s draft against them, which resulted in the game quickly spiraling out of control. Aurora’s advantage just kept on growing and growing after the laning phase, and BetBoom found themselves extremely hard pressed to respond.

By the end of the 35 minute contest, Aurora Gaming had 23 kills to BetBoom Team’s seven. Hell, even Myroslav “Mira” Kolpakov was getting in on the action as Ringmaster, grabbing six kills for himself as well. Keep Ringmaster in mind, by the way — Mira really made a point out of snatching the hero away from Vitalie “Save-” Melnic.

Game 2 — TORONTOTOKYO Flexes His Game Sense

Seemingly uninterested in allowing BetBoom to come back in this series, Aurora threw the hammer down — nay, three hammers down in the second game. After they’d picked a teamfight-heavy lineup involving Tiny, Earthshaker, and Magnus, I initially thought that it would take a while for their draft to get going. It looked more like they were aiming for a mid game timing with their heroes needing Blink Daggers to be effective, but I couldn’t have been any more incorrect, apparently.

Simply put, they steamrolled BetBoom in the early game. Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko and Nikita “panto” Balaganin won the safe lane matchup while the rest more or less drew even — but this was more than enough for them to get set for the timing I was referring to. Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek, who by the way is doing fantastically as an offlaner, practically secured the mid game for Aurora by buying a Pipe of Insight on his Magnus at the 19 minute mark.

1000 gold in the space of 10 seconds 🥵🥵https://t.co/FnOCwJvlNA pic.twitter.com/eF4aX1In50

— BLAST Slam (@BLASTDota) May 7, 2025

This pickup allowed his team to just destroy BetBoom’s magic damage lineup in teamfights, as the BLAST Slam 1 winners just couldn’t dish out enough of it to contend with their opponents. Things got real ugly for BetBoom real quick from there, with kiyotaka leading the charge as the mid Earthshaker. In fact, he had such a great game that he even farmed neutral creep stacks with Echo Slam, knowing that he and his team were so ahead that “wasting” the cooldown wouldn’t even matter.

This result is a huge one for Aurora Gaming as an organization, which went away from their Southeast Asian roster back in February in order to sign this extremely experienced Eastern European lineup. While they’ve yet to really make a big splash this season, their steady results over the last three months lead me to believe that big things may be in store for them in the near future.

And just in time, as well. I’m sure that this team, with former International champions in tow, would love nothing more than to get invited to the world championship tournament and avoid the Eastern European qualifiers altogether. They’ve got a long road ahead of them yet at BLAST Slam 3 thanks to the unforgiving format at play — but putting away BetBoom Team in such dominant fashion is a pretty good start.