Ooredoo Thunders deliver biggest upset in Western Europe DPC and it's only Week 1

Things are heating up right from the start of the Spring Tour in the Dota Pro Circuit Spring Tour Western European regional league.

Play against the recent Lima Major Champions? With a stand-in? No problem said Ooredoo Thunders, who joined Division I this tour after securing their promotion alongside Monaspa in the previous Tour.

Their Division I debut wasn’t good at all. OT opened with a 0-2 loss this past Monday against Monaspa, the other Division II promoted team. “We always seem to have problems against Monaspa,” said OT’s mid laner Tony "No!ob" Assaf, when asked what changed, what kind of work the team put in to be able to bounce from that loss to taking down the Lima Major Champions, Gaimin Gladiators in the next series. “Open qualifiers, Division II, Division I, we always lose against Monaspa," he added.

When pitted against the best team in the region in the current DPC season, Ooredoo Thunders had a new problem to deal with. For undisclosed reasons, OT had to play with a standin in the offlane vs GG. Luckily, they were able to bring in Dmitry "Nefrit" Tarasich, who has been in trials with them when the team was looking for an offlane player.

Even so, they didn’t expect the series to go in their favour, No!ob explained

Ooredoo ThundersvsGaimin Gladiators

OT began the best-of-three affair with Gaimin Gladiators with a strong laning presence. They dominated the Abaddon - Io duo of GG, while also finding early kills in both the mid and offlane, despite being behind in gold. However, the networth difference was mainly due to playing a bit too aggressively and taking at times disadvantageous kill trades, but also due to Anton "dyrachyo" Shkredov rushing a Radiance on his carry Abaddon.

Nonetheless, past the 20-minute mark, when OT were ready to fight with five Force Staffs and Blink Daggers among their heroes, they had the initiation advantage over GG and managed to punish them for their early Radiance build.

In the first game draft, OT targeted Marcus "Ace" Christensen with their bans, his Broodmother being first ban material, followed by Nature’s Prophet and Primal Beast. In game two, they actually decided to let the Brood slip through thinking they have the answers for it.

As expected, Gladiators first picked the Brood, and had no issues playing it into what OT thought as counters: a carry Pudge with Crystal Maiden and Skywrath Mage in the support roles and a mid lane Void Spirit. Despite being able to find 5 kills in the first 5 minutes of the game on Brood, OT couldn’t keep the ball rolling through the mid stage of the game. Pudge got countered by a Puck, who could jump and silence him, while Ace, despite being slowed down extremely hard early, still found the farm to complete Guardian Greaves around the 20-minute mark and take control of the game from there on.

Heading into the third and final game, OT reverted to banning Brood and put their hope into a mid lane Tiny to stand against a Batrider coming from Quinn "Quinn" Callahan.

“We thought we had the counters for Brood, but it’s his [Ace] signature hero and we couldn’t do anything against him, so we just banned Brood in Game 3,” explained No!ob, who was the x factor in his team victory over Gaimin Gladiators. Much like in the first game, OT were dominant through the laning stage in the decisive game and were able to transition that into a complete slaughter of the major champions, closing the game 45 to 13 in kill score.

^{screen grab via PGL}

“It feels really good,” said No!ob in the winner’s interview with the English panel on the PGL official broadcast. “Honestly we didn’t expect this result, especially because we ran into some problems and we had to play with a stand-in.”

OT’s victory over Gamin Gladiators on the first week of the Western Europe DPC league doesn’t make a big difference in the standings for now as everyone is still at the beginning of the Tour. But, it might come in extremely handy later on, depending mostly on how OT will perform through the next couple of weeks. They will return to action on Friday, March 17 with a series against OG.

Gaimin Gladiators’ next matchup is scheduled for Week 2, on March 20, when they will be pitted versus Monaspa.