2023 marks the return of The International in Seattle, but the NA teams struggle to find their footing at what should be a celebration for their region.
After Shopify Rebellion failed to secure a playoff upper bracket start at TI12, TSM followed them closely by getting decimated 0-2 by Virtus.pro.
VP are one of the underdogs at TI12. They made it to Seattle via regional qualifiers after not being able to secure a spot at any of the Majors this year, but that seems to only have allowed them to fly under the radar at the most important Dota 2 tournament. Through the first phase of the group stage in Seattle, VP landed a 3-5 game score, which was good enough to have them advancing in the second phase. At the same time, TSM were second in Group D, which featured the defending Champions Tundra Esports.
Coming into the seeding matches, all eyes were on the NA squad, especially after Shopify were sent to the lower bracket by Team Spirit.
“We destroyed them,” said Virtus.pro captain, Artsiom "Fng" Barshak at the end of what was a quick and clean victory over TSM. He is the most experienced player on the VP roster and his mission, besides winning, is to teach his players how to stay confident, as he explained in an interview for the official TI broadcast.
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Virtus.proIn both games TSM aimed at a quick tempo type of Dota, looking to snowball and corner their adversaries fast. However, for that to happen, they needed a strong laning stage to capitalize on, and that was exactly where VP countered them.
Game one featured plenty of stuns and heavy lockdowns from VP, which were perfect setups for FNG on Ancient Apparition. He got to play AA in game two as well, countering the save potential coming from a support Dazzle on the TSM side and a carry Lifestealer.
With VP’s victory, the EEU region has two out of the four teams at TI12 already comfortably installed in the playoff upper bracket. The region won’t be able, however, to have all its teams in the UB rounds as on Sunday, October 15, BetBoom Team and 9Pandas will go head to head in the seeding series.
For NA, the last hope lies on nouns, who will have a very tough opponent to overcome as Tundra Esports, the defending champions, picked them for the seeding match.
