Wednesday was the battle of the bottom teams of the EU DPC, so far. Usually we'd say that week 2 is a bit too early to tell who's gonna end up at the bottom and at the top. However, in this case we feel that it has been fairly clear so far. There's maybe a chance for Tundra Esports to squeeze into the safe spots but the same can't really be said for High Coast Esports. At least in their current form. So coming into this series we favored Tundra by... quite a bit.
And we're not gonna lie to you, Tundra won by quite a bit as well. A fairly easy 2-0 in a series where it seemed like HCE never really managed to get going. Tundra ran the table from start to end and are now, officially, the outsiders of the EU DPC. High Coast Esports are now in big trouble. They have to come up with something really special in the next few weeks if they want to remain in the upper division.
 | vs. |  |
| High Coast Esports | Tundra Esports | |
| 0 | 2 |
Game 1: One bad rotation
| High Coast Esports (Radiant) | Tundra Esports (Dire) | |||||||||
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |
Heading into the laning phase things stabilized pretty quickly. All cores got farm, even though Supream lagged behind a little bit in the safe lane. The stalemate was somewhat broken about five minutes into the game as Nine decided to go on the offensive in the middle lane. Both him and Charlie were fairly low at the time but a haste rune on Nine meant that he had a slight advantage. Led on by a nicely placed Aether Remnant, it looked like the kills, and as a consequence the lane, would be his. However, Charlie showed off his best juking moves as both supports from his team came in to help him. At first glance this was a moment worthy of Benny Hill music but the slight overrotation from the HCE supports opened up both sidelanes for Tundra. And their cores immediately opened up a nice CS lead.
The result of this CS lead was a laning situation where Supream had to go mid for farm, forcing Charlie into the jungle. And suddenly Tundra hadn't just won a lane, they had free farm in it. That means they were now in a position where bot was free, mid couldn't be threatened — due to the level differential between Supream and Nine — and at top they had a Juggernaut against two heroes relying on magical damage to take him down. A dream scenario for them just 7 minutes in.
For the next few minutes we saw both teams getting a bit antsy. They poked and prodded, looking for a weakness to get that key core kill. And surprisingly the key kills came from HCE. Tundra got a bit too hot for their own good and tried to push the mid-tower with limited vision. They got punshed as HCE claimed both their lives but fortunately for them this just put a small dent in their lead.
A few imprecise moves from Tundra kept the game interesting, on a surface level, but in reality they just pulled further and further ahead as every minute passed. 30 minutes in, it was time for the GG as Tundra aggressively followed HCE into their own base and slapped them around a bit.
Game 2: More of the same
| High Coast Esports (Dire) | Tundra Esports (Radiant) | |||||||||
 |  |  |  |  |  | |  |  | | |
There were other trend changes as well. HCE managed to grab two important core kills, on 33's Viper and Nine's Void Spirit, in the early game. Unfortunately Chessie couldn't stay bottom with his Enigma and had to relinquish the lane extremely early, giving Tundra a free farming Troll bottom. It's easy to question that decision from the mainly Swedish squad but with their draft they really had no other choice. A bounty hunter 4 is not exactly a force to be reckoned with in the laning stage. And Ursa cannot solo-farm against a Viper.
The joy from the initial two kills quickly subsided, though. With just a few levels on his hero, 33 managed to respond in kind up top as he brought down Ursa. It cost him his life but that's a cheap price to pay for a kill on the position 1. And when, just a few minutes later, HCE tried to stop the Viper from farming by moving up, they were severely punished as the Monkey King was also forfeit. It all started going downhill from here. And quickly so. Another kill on the Monkey. A failed rotation bot. A level 5 Ursa, trying to farm the jungle. Another failed gank attempt. HCE could just not get anything going until they dropped a black hole for a kill on the Troll Warlord bot.
But it was too little too late. This game was just as one-sided as the first one and Tundra could easily claim their first win in the DPC. HCE is a team that needs to figure out map movement. And drafting. And item selection. Because if Tundra is their Everest, they're going to struggle in the rest of the DPC.
Recommended game:
Nope. Go watch one of the other regions!
Writer: Julmust
Editor: OmniEulogy
Graphics: Julmust / DreamHack
Editor: OmniEulogy
Graphics: Julmust / DreamHack
