Issue 1: Kickoff
New OQ teams making a splash, and more!
Welcome to the first edition of Ancient Tidings, the Dota 2 newsletter! I aim to bring to you, dear readers, news of what’s hot in the ever-dynamic world of Dota 2. From notable pro matches (it is genuinely hard to keep up with every match from every region, apologies if I missed a few matches you thought should be mentioned!) to weird pub builds to some great pieces of content created by passionate people, I’m gonna try to highlight them under this umbrella so that you’re all caught up!
Let’s dive in.
First up: the former kings of WEU, Team Secret.
Notably underperforming in Tour 1 of the WEU Div 1 DPC as well as the Gamers Galaxy LAN that concluded recently, fans were wondering (sometimes rather aggressively) about the relatively weak performances being shown by the storied team.
Secret kicked off the second tour of the WEU DPC by facing off against one of the strongest teams from the previous tour, Team Liquid. Nobody would be surprised if they would come out as victors after the conclusion of this series.
Team Secret 2-0’d Team Liquid (rather handily in game 2), but that wasn’t even the most surprising part. Sumail and Nisha swapped roles, with the former playing pos 1 like he did back on OG, while the latter went back to pos 2, a role which brought him praise from LGD’s Nothingtosay.
What caught my attention was the drafter. Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t Puppey doing the drafting this time around, but Sumail himself. Quite a fascinating twist given Puppey’s reputation and legacy as one of the greatest drafters the game has ever seen.
Will this continue to pay dividends? If you’re a fan, you better hope so.
NGX.EU’s online woes continued in their opening match against OG as well, leading to the young squad taking out the veterans in quick fashion.
Entity Gaming, one of the freshly promoted teams (primarily comprising of the old Creepwave roster) in WEU Div 1 this tour, made Tundra sweat in their first match with a first phase Huskar, showing that despite their earlier status as a Div 2 team they’re not someone to be trifled with. Tundra did turn things around however to take the series 2-1, but still, expect a few upsets by this squad in the coming weeks.
Moving on to another team in the EU, but in Div 2…
Winter Bears made a name for themselves by being the first fully Middle-eastern pro Dota 2 team in history. They qualified via the open qualifiers to Div 2 in WEU; at the time of writing, they’ve got 2 losses against Team Bald as well as Chicken Fighters. Notably, they took a game off the latter, which is impressive since they were amongst the contenders for promotion towards the conclusion of the previous tour. New faces on the scene are always a good indicator, and I for one hope they keep their slot.
Things weren’t quite so rosy for another Div 2 team, however…
Team Orca picked up the open qualifier stack known as Ragdoll for Tour 2 of the SEA DPC. vtfaded and Citrus (formerly known as Ahjit) might be names from their roster you’re familiar with. They were making waves in non-DPC tournaments in the SEA region, winning against teams like T1, a top tier team from Division 1. With NGX.Sea and Polaris advancing to Div 1 after the conclusion of Tour 1, Orca was considered to be the favourite for promotion this time around.
Until, of course, they were found to be smurfing on the accounts of players from Team Apex, and subsequently, banned.
Don’t be like Orca.
Other notable teams in Div 2 I’ve got an eye on currently include Team Bald Reborn, the reinvigorated Talon Esports in SEA (with the addition of 23Savage from T1 and Q from MTG), Goonsquad (a squad majorly made up of ex-Alliance members) and of course, the current Alliance. Special shoutout to RSG-Esports, an org that recently picked up the stack called Chubbyboiz, who qualified to Div 2 of the SEA DPC via the open qualifiers, and are looking damn good as of their first two matches.
All of the above teams started off this Tour with victories:
Team Bald 2-0’d Winter Bear in their debut match.
Talon also 2-0’d Lilgun, one of the contenders for promotion from last tour in SEA.
Goonsquad 2-0’d Chillax in their opening match, followed up by another 2-0 over Team IVY. A few of you might recognize Qupe from this roster.
Alliance comfortably 2-0’d Into the Breach.
RSG is ruffling feathers, having beaten three teams, all 2-0s versus Army Geniuses, MTG as well as Lilgun. Keep in mind this is an open qualifier team. They’re certainly a team to watch.
Speaking of Div 2… Polaris Esports qualified to Div 1 in SEA for Tour 2, after going with 0 losses in Div 2 of the previous tour. Their first match this tour was against T1, one of the best teams from last tour who themselves underwent a change, bringing in Gabbi (from Talon, previously TNC). To the surprise of many, Polaris made quick work of T1 in 2 back-to-back games.
Since we’ve been focusing a bit on SEA, johnxfire recently joined Talon Esports as a content creator. Eagerly looking forward to how this partnership pans out and what he comes up with!
A hero duo that has been gaining notoriety lately has to be that of Ember Spirit and Keeper of the Light. The Primal Beast update, you might recall, made Ember Spirit’s Sleight of Fist do full damage to creeps, enabling the hero to be played from the safe lane as well. Combined with KOTL’s Chakra magic reducing cooldown on it… that’s a lot of pain if you’re up against it. Recently Team Secret used it against Team Liquid successfully, but no team did it quite like Team SMG (against Execration), running an Ember Spirit on the offlane… and winning with it! Anything can work, right?
Not everything was fine and dandy in the DPC however. BOOM Esports, hot off their victory in Dubai, were all set to kick off Tour 2 of the DPC against NGX.Sea. Fans were disappointed, as a freak storm at their base knocked off all power and internet at their location, leaving them unable to play, despite their best efforts. This led to them forfeiting their first match of the season. Serendipitous for NGX.Sea, however.
The woes continued later that same day as OG vs Liquid was indefinitely postponed, due to OG’s Taiga highlighting a lobby bug to his former teammates at Liquid. This bug resulted in the location of enemy creep camps being visible, letting players guess the location of heroes farming the jungle. In the spirit of fair play, both teams agreed to face off later.
Apart from the DPC, it is worth noting that joinDota, one of the earliest gateaways into the Dota 2 community when the scene was at its infancy, recently announced that it was shutting down. The website served as a repository for news and discussions for the public, but they also gave a lot of today’s casters their first foray into the world of esports broadcasts. Notable names include Cap, Gareth, Bkop, Moxxi. They also were responsible for tournaments like the joinDota league and The Defense which gave players an opportunity to play, during a time when third-party tournaments weren’t really a thing. They will be missed.
PGL surprised everybody when they announced a Dota 2 major in August… set in Arlington, Texas. This will be the first major Dota 2 LAN set in NA since… the cancelled ESL One LA, 2020. Of course, it being set in August could mean that we are looking at another TI set in October this year.
ESL also announced its talent lineup for the Stockholm major scheduled later this May, with the faces largely being the same if you’re following the WEU and NA DPC coverage. Makes sense, due to the same org running both these events, but one can’t help but wonder if an international event should have a few faces from other regions, as well.
In terms of miscellaneous content, WeSayThings, the podcast started by Sunsfan and Synderen, recently had Fly on. Fly spoke at length about his storied career, including the events leading up to TI8. Well worth the watch.
johnxfire and Mike Le Phoenix also have their own, comparitively more recent podcast called the johnxmike podcast. Their passion for the pro scene and SEA Dota in particular really shines through, and I look forward to every episode of theirs.
A trend I’ve noticed on r/Dota2 recently: funny player names combined with badly photoshopped images, leading to a flood of posts showcasing names like Lion El Messi and Tony Slark, to name a few. Some of these are reminiscent of the alt names given to some heroes in Dota 1, for instance, Jackie Chen!
Thanks for sticking around! Week 1 of the DPC served to highlight Div 2 in particular for me, with fresh faces causing upsets. Div 1 continues to bring high-level Dota around the week. I’ll try and go through the regions I missed this time around, CN, SA and NA as well.
Stay tuned for the next issue of Ancient Tidings.
i hope you keep this up. May be give a short subtitle to summary the story parts?
Nice to see more gaming writing on Substack!