Lima Major kicked off with Group A matches and a couple of surprises have already happened.
2023 is shaping up to be an important year for the continuously growing South American Dota 2 scene. Following the amazing showing on the TI11 stage for the SA teams, this year’s Dota Pro Circuit not only features Evil Geniuses, one of the oldest esports organisations, moving to South America but also the first ever Dota 2 Major held in Peru.
With Lima Major being now held on the EG home soil, the expectations are through the roof for their new roster, however, PSG.LGD, who are in Lima with a stand-in, have already interfered with their plans by taking a game from them in the Bo2 single round-robin group stage format.
Evil Geniuses![]()
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PSG.LGD
PSG.LGDEG opened their Lima Major campaign with a perfect tempo first game of the series versus China’s top seed team. They ran a Lina-Broodmother-Leshrac trio core meant to take control of the game super fast, while PSG.LGD tried to counter or even outpace them with a Naga Siren-Lycan duo core.
However, the Naga needed time to become a menacing carry and, even so, her illusions would have had nearly no chance to survive EG’s Lina and Leshrac. EG didn’t even allow the game to go to a late game scenario, ending the madness in 30 minutes, but heading into the second game, they decided to ban both Lina and Brood themselves.
Instead, EG tried a different lane pressure strategy that should have snowballed into an early push. They had a carry Nature’s Prophet and a signature offlane Venomancer, but got heavily outmaneuvered by PSG.LGD, who crushed them with a carry Ursa and an offlane Death Prophet.
While the 1-1 result in their major debut is not a disaster for EG, every series from now on can make the difference from an upper or lower bracket seed for the playoffs.
Execration also pull a surprise
Tundra Esports![]()
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Execration
ExecrationSoutheast Asia's top seed team, Execration has also delivered an impressive win over the defending TI11 champions, Tundra Esports. The SEA representative started the bo2 series on the wrong foot, giving both Lina and Riki to Tundra and got completely dominated. However, in game two it became clear that they intentionally gave the meta powerful duo to Tundra, knowing that they have the strats to beat it.
Lina and Riki were first picks material for Tundra once more, but they were not prepared for a signature Visage - Tiny offlane duo coming from Execration. The laning stage went all in favour of XctN, who by the 20 minute mark were already leading with 13 kills to 3 and were ready to prepare the big push after securing an uncontested Roshan. However, they needed the second Rosh spawn to make a perfect and clean high ground assault and end the series 1-1 against the TI champions.
Execrations’ regional friends from Talon Esports have also managed to make the Lima Major debut with a draw score, taking a game from Gaimin Gladiators. Group A first batch of matches concluded with only Team Spirit taking a clean 2-0 victory, against the NA representative TSM.
Day 1 in the Lima Major group stage continues with the first round of matches in Group B and will end with the second batch of matches from Group A, so stay tuned and check our tournament HUB for more updates from the first-ever SA Major.
