Tundra Esports had a strong group-stage performance and looked poised to defend their Dota 2 title at The International 2023. However, that success evaporated after groups, with Entity decimating Tundra 2-0 in the playoffs to send the TI11 champions home.
Entering the first round of the playoffs, Tundra was already in new territory since their TI11 run to lift the Aegis was done through the upper bracket—something an upset loss to nouns in the seeding phase of groups prevented this year.
Starting in the lower bracket, Tundra had the unfortunate luck of pulling Entity, a regional rival that has plenty of experience against them, with Tundra holding an 8-4 record over Stormstormer’s squad heading into this matchup. It looked like Tundra would improve that 66.7 percent winrate in game one after dominating the opening 25 minutes, but it all fell apart at the 27-minute mark when Entity picked off four heroes, including Topson’s Pugna, and took control.
By 34 minutes, Entity was killing all of Tundra’s options to counter them, and they soon rushed Roshan to get watson’s unstoppable Naga Siren an Aegis. From there, Tundra couldn’t pull things back together and Entity walked away with a 48-minute win—leaving behind a disheartened opponent heading into game two.
Tundra then pulled away after 15 minutes of trading blows. Entity kept getting good picks to keep Tundra in check, however, and a lack of BKB on skiter’s Alchemis left him without the sustain necessary to stay alive in what would be the final fight of the series.
After killing skiter a second time while pushing the highground, leaving him dead for two minutes, Entity dismantled the rest of Tundra to claim a 2-0 win.
This sweep puts Entity one step away from claiming their highest finish at a TI since forming re-entering Dota in 2021 and placing ninth at TI11. They will have to survive another elimination series against Virtus.pro later today to make it that far.
For Tundra, the team exits TI12 in a tie for 13th place after a mixed Dota 2 season that resulted in bringing Topson and shifting nine to a new position while Saksa stepped away from the team for health reasons.
“Having Topson introduced… at the last minute is a huge change to our dynamic,” sneyking said post-game. “Obviously, we didn’t end up making it work that well [laughs,] but I think there were glimmers of hope and brilliance for us. Things just didn’t go our way. We didn’t improve as much as we needed to while other [teams] improved a little bit more.”
