Dota 2’s version of Groundhog Day was — depending on who you asked — the best or worst thing to happen in the Dota Pro Circuit this week.
Tundra Esports, Entity, and OG, ended the DPC WEU Tour 1 Div I tied third with 4-3 records. This necessitated a round-robin best-of-one tiebreakers — three times over.
The first two rounds ended in a stalemate after the three teams found themselves in a rock, paper, scissors situation — Tundra beating OG, Entity beating Tundra, and OG beating Entity.
David “MoonMeander” Tan called it “the best thing that happened in Tour one,” while Tundra’s captain Wu “Sneyking” Jingjun said it was “the worst shit ever.“
The tiebreakers even had to be postponed to the next day, since OG’s Bozhidar “bzm” Bogdanov had an exam in the morning.
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Tundra finally ends DPC WEU’s Groundhog Day with clean, methodical games
The stalemate was broken in the last round, when the International 11 champions showed up in style for both of their games. The best-of-ones were a perfect example of how well Tundra plays the map, with no qualms of dragging games out to get farm on all their heroes.
The first game saw Tundra pull out the rare carry Dragon Knight for Oliver “skiter” Lepko, while OG picked Naga Siren, who held a sizeable net worth advantage through the game — until Skiter overtook her in the closing minutes of the match.
To counteract Naga’s illusion spam, Skiter opted to delve into the cancer himself, building a Hand of Midas, Blink, Manta Style, and Octarine Core. This allowed him to constantly siege OG’s base with Elder Dragon illusions that deal Corrosive Breath damage to the towers, both of which were also immensely tanky. Slowly but surely, Tundra chipped away at OG’s base and picked off any stray OG heroes — eventually culminating in a 60-minute victory.
In game two, it was even more dominance from Tundra against Entity. The TI11 champions held the lead from the start and never let go, thanks to midlaner Leon “Nine” Kirilin’s impeccable laning performance on Zeus that saw him get two solo kills against Daniel “Stormstormer” Schoetzau. He never looked back, earning an 18/0/11 KDA on Zeus, as Tundra took their time — only taking down Entity’s tier one mid tower at 50 minutes! — finally making good on their stranglehold on the map.
The last game of the day saw Entity going up against OG. This time around, it was Stormstormer who had the last laugh, putting in a shift on his signature Invoker. He accumulated a 12/1/19 KDA, participating in all but three of his team’s kills, and demolished OG constantly with stellar spellcasting and big teamfight spells.
All highlights and full matches can be found on PGL’s official YouTube channel.
READ MORE: The Dota 2 hero tier list (February 2023)
