Western Europe's big battle for the final ticket to The International 10 is entering the straight line and Tundra Esports are the ones to deliver the biggest upset with a smooth sail through the upper bracket.
Going into the TI10 Western Europe qualifiers, all eyes were on OG, Team Nigma and Team Liquid, but Tundra Esports stole the show thus far with their clean 6-0 performance. Their hot 2-0 start over Brame continued into another clean cut victory through Team Liquid, while the finals brought a final wake-up call for the double TI champions OG, who were also slain 2-0.
OG
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Tundra Esports
While Tundra had a flawless run, OG reached the upper bracket finals after a tense duel with an old friend, Team Nigma, in the semifinals just yesterday and heading into the Tundra match, they were overwhelmed twice and dropped to the lower bracket finals.
In game one, while OG were aligning a draft of their own where they, carefully building around a carry Bristleback, Tundra went with a straight up Broodmother opener and surprised their opponents with a last pick Winter Wyvern for Leon "Nine" Kirilin in the mid lane.
Tundra’s overall plan to claim the entire map as fast as possible worked perfectly, as they applied constant pressure in the top lane with the Broodmother and forced OG to defend the rest of the towers as they were increasing their lead with Luna and WW causing tremendous damage.
Nine’s flawless early game allowed him to go for an early Aghanim’s Scepter, followed by Silver Edge which translated into double the amount of damage done by his carry Luna with a Manta Style-Butterfly-Satanic full build.
Heading into the second game, although both Brood and WW were banned by OG, Tundra went for the same overall game plan of taking the early map advantage and corner OG in the base. Their concept of countering OG was perfect as the latter felt confident to bring the Alchemist Aghs factory strat with a mid lane Arc Warden for Topias "Topson" Taavitsainen.
The laning phase went disastrously for OG and especially for Sébastien "Ceb" Debs, who missed the timing on the first Aghanim, while 33 on Tidehunter with a rushed Helm of the Dominator was taking down the first tier two tower at the 13 minute mark. OG needed the game to get dragged into a very late scenario for a shot at bouncing back, but despite commendable efforts from Syed "SumaiL" Hassan in the high ground defense, Tundra were way too far ahead in terms of networth and a couple of deaths on their Terrorblade were not enough to stop them from claiming the first spot in the grand finals.
Western Europe qualifiers will wrap up tomorrow, July 10. OG will fight for a shot at making it back into the grand finals via lower bracket finals at 13:00 CET.
headline image courtesy of Tundra Esports via Twitter
