Falcons soar, Tundra fall at FISSURE PLAYGROUND 2

Tundra Esports and Team Falcons appeared to be the unstoppable forces at the start of the season. The former are competing in their first tournaments with their revamped roster, while the latter seem to have maintained their form after their triumphant The International run last month.

Both started the new competitive season with a 9-2 game record in the round robin group stage at BLAST Slam IV, which rewarded them with semifinals slots for the playoffs portion. But between the group play and the LAN portion of BLAST, the teams traveled to Belgrade, Serbia, to compete at FISSURE PLAYGROUND 2.

Hyper aggression meets a flawless response

Different tournament, same story. Tundra and Falcons dominated the group stage, but their playoff debut brought some incredible upsets, and both teams were sent to the lower bracket. Tundra was defeated 2-1 by Team Yandex, while Falcons lost the quarterfinals 0-2 to MOUZ.

“Honestly, we are pretty disappointed with our performance vs MOUZ, so we had a team talk after that, and we hope we can get things right moving forward,” said Team Falcons’ coach Kurtis "Aui_2000" Ling on the Sava Centar stage while getting ready to fight with elimination on the line against Tundra.

Falcons opened the series with a hyper-aggressive draft. They had Bounty Hunter and Jakiro in the support lines, both having a huge impact from the early laning stage. They also had full control over Shrines of Wisdom to solidify their lead. At the same time, Tundra were playing with a support duo that can’t really play from behind. Their Bane and Shadow Demon felt powerless against Falcons’ constant pressure and, eventually, Tundra had to tap out with just 10 kills to 32 of Falcons. Game two started in the same explosive way for Falcons, who landed four early kills on Tundra’s safe lane duo, Kez and Bane. However, mid game Tundra were able to recover and after the 25 minute mark they didn’t allow Falcons to find any more openings and kills on the map. They evened the series on the back of nearly flawless game play from Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov on Queen of Pain and Neta "33" Shapira on Timbersaw.

The Mars - Monkey King wrecking ball

For the decisive game of the series, Falcons had the last pick and didn’t hesitate to take Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf’s signature hero, Mars. Besides having Ammar on his most comfortable hero, Falcons had a great combo with Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak’s Monkey King. Despite picking multiple saves between a Tusk and an Abbadon, Tundra couldn’t survive the amount of damage coming from Falcons and exit the competition in eighth place.

“They were playing for objectives, we just focused on farm and allowed them to pick us off as they wished,” said Tundra’s coach, David "MoonMeander" Tan, during the exit interview on stage. While he called the 8th place finish at this event “a disastrous result” for the team, he also mentioned that heading to BLAST, one of the main priorities would be to improve the in-game communication.

While Tundra will get their chance at revenge in Singapore, through the BLAST Slam IV playoffs, Team Falcons will continue their redemption arc at FISSURE PLAYGROUND 2 later today when they will be pitted against Team Spirit. The series is expected to start at 19:00 CET.