Team Spirit outplay Falcons at Riyadh Masters 2024 while Heroic keep the upsets rolling

^{headline picture credits: BrandonDowling|ESL}

Riyadh Masters 2024 first day of the group stage opened with a hype series between the current top two teams of the competitive season.

Most of the Dota 2 fans look at Team Spirit versus Team Falcons as the only possible grand finals of the Riyadh Masers tournament at Esports World Cup. But while we are pretty far away from the finals day, the group stage opening series brought top notch Dota played by Team Spirit, the defending champions.

Team FalconsvsTeam Spirit

Team Falcons started the two game series extremely strong. They dominated the laning stage with an offlane Broodmother from Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf. By the eleventh minute mark, Falcons were ready to dive Team Spirit past three tier towers, with ATF leading the charge. Team Spirit were strangled in their jungle corners carefully trying to farm on their cores while they were waiting for the right moment to take a fight.

By the 20 minute mark, Flacons held an over 20k gold lead and the game seemed to be heading to a stompy finale. However, at that moment in the match, they lacked a Black King Bar on their carry Sven and that was the window of opportunity Spirit were looking for. A fight that led to a full team wipe gave Team Spirit the chance to mount a full comeback.

“I think they didn’t understand the power of our heroes,” said Denis "Larl" Sigitov in the post match interview for the English broadcast. “Sven should have bought BkB,” he added, referring to the moment when his team was able to turn the tide.

While the first game was a masterclass of resilience and strategic choices from Team Spirit, the second game was way easier for them as they out-drafted their adversaries to take a clean 2-0 win.

Heroic upset Gaimin Gladiators

Riyadh Masters 2024 group stage kicked off with 16 teams seeded into two groups of eight teams each. Given the number of competitors, the group stage is played with four series running simultaneously and from the first batch of games from Group A, Heroic are the biggest surprise so far.

The South American representative comes from the play-in stage, where they also impressed the most from all the participating teams. They claimed the top seed there and moving forward they already claimed another victim.

Gaimin Gladiators got defeated 0-2 by Heroic, who also had two dominant games, giving the European powerhouse no room for a comeback.  

For both Falcons and Gaimin Gladiators, there is still time to even the day. All teams from Group A have two series scheduled on the first day of group play and will return to the stage after Group B plays its first matches. So, stay tuned for more updates from Riyadh Masters 2024, the Dota 2 tournament at Esports World Cup.  
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