Team Falcons once again added another feather to its cap as it took home the championship at the recently concluded Dota 2 DreamLeague Season 23. The team managed to sweep Gaimin Gladiators 3-0. With this, the team gets its hands on $300,00 and 6,000 Points.
This is the third big win for Falcons with strong showings at DreamLeague Season 22 and ESL One Birmingham 2024. They now lead the ESL Pro Tour Leaderboard with a total of 18,280 points. Not bad for a team that joined the Dota 2 competitive scene in November 2023.
Road to the Finals
Similar to the two previous tournaments, Falcons ended the Group Stage on top. This time around it had four wins and one draw. It's road to the Grand Final was exciting. The team first faced Xtreme Gaming in the Upper Bracket Seminfinals. They managed to win at 2-0 and faced Gaimin in the Upper Bracket Final. There Gaimin made quick work of them resulting in Falcon dropping to the Lower Bracket Final and facing BetBoom Team.
Falcons won the first game and given what happened in the past, there was the expectation that the team would sweep BetBoom. However, that would not be the case as Egor "Nightfall" Grigorenko would carry BetBoom to victory and tie the series. Falcons would be determined as BetBoom could not find an answer and had to settle for third place.
The Grand Final
The Grand Final had Falcons go against Gaimin, the latter having momentum on their side. Making things even more exciting was that Valve had recently released a new patch for Dota 2.
The first game was rather quick ending in just undr 30 minutes. This was all thanks to excellent performances from Oliver "skiter" Lepko on Weaver and Stanislav "Malr1ne" Potorak on Dragon Knight. It didn't help that Gaimin didn't seem to know what to do against Weaver.
In the second game, Falcons was off to a good start and showed excellent teamwork. Gaimin did what it could especially during the mid-game but falcons had found its groove and there was no stopping them. Malr1ne had 20 kills on Razor with Gaimin having a total of 19 kills.
With the championship on the line, Gaiming went for a stronger roster for the third game. It was back and forth in the early game though Falcons started to do what it did best and that is leave opponents in the dust. Try as they might, Gaimin was unable to catch, and Falcons sealed the win and with it the championship. It was again Malr1ne who had the greatest number of kills with 17 on Timbersaw.
The next major tournament is the Riyadh Masters 2024 which is happening this July. It has a prize pool of $5 million. The question on everyone's mind is probably which Dota 2 team is stopping Team Falcons from taking the top prize?
