TI 2024 Playoffs: Talon Esports is the first team to be eliminated at the hands of BetBoom Team

Image: Dota 2 TI Flickr

Talon Esports exit TI 2024 after only managing to win two games throughout the entire tournament.

Southeast Asia's Talon Esports are the first team to fall in this year's battle for the Aegis of Champions at The International 2024 (TI 2024) after they fell to Eastern Europe's BetBoom Team, 2-1, in their best-of-three elimination match at the first round of the Playoff lower bracket.

Both BetBoom and Talon were forced to start the TI 2024 Playoffs in the lower bracket following underwhelming performances in the Group Stage and Seeding Decider.

Despite being one of the directly invited teams, BetBoom ended the Group Stage as the third seed of Group C with a 2-4 record. Talon, who earned their spot through the Southeast Asian regional qualifier, finished at the bottom of the standings in Group B with a 1-5 standing. BetBoom then narrowly lost to Team Liquid in the Seeding Decider while Talon were soundly swept by Xtreme Gaming, which set up the BetBoom-Talon matchup as the first elimination match of TI 2024.

Talon EsportsvsBetBoom Team

BetBoom came out swinging to start the series behind a high-tempo tri-core of Luna for Egor “Nightfall” Grigorenko, Void Spirit for Danil “gpk” Skutin, and Beastmaster for Matvey “MieRo`” Vasyunin. Meanwhile, Talon gambled on winning the laning stage and snowballing behind Eljohn “Akashi” Andales' carry Shadow Fiend.

Unfortunately for Talon, their gamble ended in disaster as they were simply ran over in the laning stage. BetBoom racked up 13 kills and a 9,000 gold lead by the 18-minute mark before Talon could answer by winning a teamfight where they scored four kills. However, that only served to delay the inevitable as BetBoom continued their march to a 34-minute game one win.

Nightfall paced BetBoom's 24-8 kill lead with a perfect eight-kill, five-assist performance while MieRo pitched in with a game-high nine kills and six assists on three deaths.

Game two followed a similar script as BetBoom drafted another high-tempo composition led by Nightfall on Weaver and gpk on a mid Nature's Prophet. MieRo on Kunkka, Vitalie “Save-” Melnic on Batrider, and Alexander “TORONTOTOKYO” Khertek on Tusk also provided strong initiation and teamfight abilities.

Meanwhile, Talon looked to mount a comeback with a heavy ranged-damage lineup headlined by Akashi on Morphling and with Tri “Jhocam” Kuncoro on a support Mirana buffing him with courtesy of his hero's Solar Flare Facet. Rafli “Mikoto” Rahman on Monkey King and Chung “Ws`” Wei Shen on Mars manned the front lines while Pang “ponyo” Sze Xuan on Phoenix had the team's big teamfight ultimate.

Much like game one, BetBoom dominated the laning stage and were up 9-1 in kills and by almost 5,000 gold just 12 minutes in. With pressure mounting, Talon scrambled to minimise any losses from BetBoom ganks while farming up on their cores in the hopes of a late-game comeback.

As BetBoom's gold lead grew to over 20,000 as the game started going late, they repeatedly tried to break into Talon's base – only to be met by a stubborn defense and repeatedly repelled. But even after BetBoom's gold lead peaked at over 35,000 at the 45-minute mark, Talon's draft showed its strength at just the right time as their overwhelming damage output caught their opponents lacking.

With the tides turned in their favour, Talon swooped into BetBoom's base and destroyed their Ancient even through backdoor protection to force the series to a deciding third game after a 50-minute thriller.

With their tournament lives on the line in game three, BetBoom broke out the emergency Storm Spirit pick for gpk to lead a hard-hitting tri-core that also included Morphling for Nightfall and Doom for MieRo. Meanwhile, Talon looked to take another late win with Akashi on Luna and Mikoto going for Monkey King again.

While Talon put up a better fight in the laning stage this time around, a dominant showing by gpk still gave them control of the game heading into the midgame. Talon managed to win a couple of well-executed skirmishes, but the five-on-five teamfights all went in BetBoom's favour as gpk and Nightfall thrived in the chaos.

Despite Talon's best efforts to hold out for 50 minutes, it was not enough as BetBoom took the 2-1 series victory and advanced to the second round of the lower bracket. Gpk put up a stellar 17 kills and 14 assists on just one death in the closeout game while MieRo added nine kills and 16 assists on two deaths.

With this result, Talon make a disappointing 13th-16th place exit from TI 2024 and will take home over $37,000 in consolation.

Meanwhile, BetBoom have guaranteed themselves at least a Top 12 placement as well as just under $50,000 in winnings. However, their day is not yet over as they will next face North America's nouns in the second round of the lower bracket.

TI 2024 is this year's iteration of Dota 2's annual world championship tournament and features 16 of the best teams in the world fighting for their cut of the growing $2.36 million prize pool and the Aegis of Champions.

The event is being hosted from September 4 to 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark and is split into two distinct phases: the Group stage (September 4 to 5) and the Seeding Deciders (September 6 to 7). The first two rounds of the Playoffs (September 8 to 10) are branded as part of The Road to The International, while the remaining portion of the Playoffs for the remaining eight teams (September 13 to 15) are branded as The International itself.

For everything you need to know about TI 2024, check here.