photo credits: Sebastian Pandelache|PGL
PGL Wallachia Season 2 opened the new competitive season. It was the first international LAN tournament after The International 2024 and it concluded with a historic win.
Heroic made their debut at The International (TI) in Copenhagen, Denmark just last month. The organisation ventured into the Dota 2 space at the beginning of the year by signing a South American roster and qualified for the pinnacle Dota 2 tournament of the year after playing the full season in the SA region. Unfortunately, their TI story came to an end quickly in the first lower bracket round of the playoffs, ironically at the hands of beastcoast, another SA team.
In the event’s aftermath, the team suffered quite an important loss when their carry player Héctor "K1" Rodríguez decided to take an extended break from competitive Dota 2.
David "Parker" Nicho Flores took his place and changed the team dynamics quite a bit, with his different approach to the carry role and a rather different hero pool than K1.
PGL Wallachia Season 2 marked the LAN debut for Parker with Heroic, and right from the get-go the team sat above the competition with a clean 3-0 run in the modified swiss-system group stage.
Moving into the playoffs, Heroic kept on winning, reaching the upper bracket finals, but eventually they fell into the lower bracket finals after a 1-2 loss to Team Falcons. To bounce back into the grand finals, they had to take down Tundra Esports a second time in the tournament.
The finals day at PGL Wallachia started with Heroic being put to a test by Tundra, who forced two long games before eventually bowing out in third place. But despite the lower bracket finals going the distance, Heroic seemed fully focused and completely prepared to take revenge over Falcons in the best-of-five grand finals.
A win for the history books
This was just the third time in Dota 2 history that an SA team has reached the grand finals. Before Heroic at PGL Wallachia Season 2, only paiN Gaming had reached a grand final on LAN for SA at Dota Summit 10 in 2019. Before that, it was SG e-sports at The Final Match Season 1 in 2017. Both teams, however, failed to land the big win and bring a trophy home.
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Heroic
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HeroicThe grand finals opened with a nail-biting first game that reached the 70 minute mark and featured some of the most entertaining competitive Dota played on LAN this year. Parker got to show off on a Bloodseeker, which in the late game scenario was able to dish out around 10k hero damage in every big team fight since Falcons had three beefy cores in Alchemist, Timbersaw and Pangolier, who were able to prolong the engagements and push Heroic to their limits.
From a position 5 Gyrocopter with two Divine Rapiers, constant fights that almost left the casters with no voice for the rest of the series, to a base race where Heroic were left without the option of teleporting back to their base and defending the Throne, game one is definitely worth watching by those who missed the action live.
Game two continued to deliver at the same intensity. Falcons got to play their signature hero for this tournament, Nature’s Prophet, but Heroic seemed to have studied them in the tiniest details and had an answer for it. Despite having a 66.67% win rate with the hero at PGL Wallachia Season 2, Flacons got outmanoeuvred and ultimately outplayed by Parker on Morphling and João "4nalog" Santos on a mid lane Earth Spirit.
Game three featured an extremely laggy server as Falcons drafted an offlane Broodmother meant to impose a fast-paced game. However, Heroic found the initiations on the pesky spider with a mid lane Primal Beast and secured the team fight damage with a carry Shadow Fiend. It was once again Parker who delivered a near perfect performance to put Heroic one game away from taking the championship title.
In the fourth and final match of the series, Falcons were simply run over by Heroic, who took an early laning stage advantage courtesy of 4nalog’s mid lane Sand King. They held onto their lead and sealed the deal at the 30-minute mark, with 34 kills to 8 and over 20k gold advantage.
Parker’s stellar performance through the entire tournament, moreso in the grand finals, also brought him the tournament MVP title.
Besides bringing home the first ever tournament trophy for South America, Heroic have also earned $300,000 while Falcons have had to settle with $175,000 for their second place finish.
With PGL Wallachia Season 2 done and dusted, the 2024-25 competitive season will resume next week, on the 19th of October with BetBoom Dacha Belgrade 2024. Falcons will have another shot at making a mark in the early days of the season by taking a trophy home, while Heroic will not be competing in this event. The next tournament for the SA champions will be DreamLeague Season 24, which is set to start on the 27th of October, 2024.
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