Right from making it into the regional qualifiers by one teeth rattling game, with a 0-4 start the group stage, pushing forward through the lower bracket defeating defending champions , to strong team players RU team Team spirit held their ground against PSG.LGD in a best of 5 and in a beautiful cinderella story won the Aegis of the Champions and made history at the Dota 2’s International 10.
Led by Miposhka, the only player on the team who has ever attended a TI before, Russian Team Spirit are the first CIS team to win The International since Na’Vi did it a decade ago at TI1. They take home $18,208,300 of the more than $40 million prize pool in a grand final worthy of the TI main stage.
Since the beginning of the tournament, their go-heroes, their own set tempo and playing their comfort style map control, had set a statement making them a dark horse at the International whose strategies couldn’t be figured out. LGD for two games fought hard and got some matches but their inability to scale there strats later on gave Team spirit an advantage in a few big teamfights that happened later in the tiebreaker 5th match of the series. Ame’s Ursa was completely dealt with and left LGD with 5 kills. THATS RIGHT 5 KILLS for the whole game.
When the best of one was at stake for the 18$ million prize pool, LGD’s meta setting Tiny lycan combo was dropped out, they set the pace with a very intuitive lead and styling mojo , until one teamfight showed them what they weren’t capable of.
A slow death of LGD began there. The magnus (Collapse.TS) with his insane horn tosses picked them off one by one back to back and retreated before PSG could respond.
LGD lost a fight near the Rosh pit, AME died with no buyback and Spirit simply ignored rosh and rushed the ancient to win TI10.
Throughout their run, the CIS team Spirit defeated Fnatic, OG, Virtus.pro, Invictus Gaming, Team Secret, and LGD. Now, they lift the Aegis, bringing it back to Eastern Europe for the first time in a decade and proving that anything can happen if a team fights together.
Sadly for LGD, this was their third straight season falling one step short of the title, having placed second at TI8 and third at TI9. They will be back to challenge the world once more in the next DPC season, hungry for blood and break their curse similar to Team Secret this TI and bring the Aegis back to China.
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