Nouns pull off an insane upset, clean sweeping Tundra Esports at the Road to the International

Nouns Esports has defeated Tundra Esports in the Phase Two of The Road to the International to send Tundra plummeting to the Lower Bracket of The International 2023. The previous champions of The International, Tundra Esports took on the team that qualified through the North American regional qualifier in what seemed like a foregone conclusion.

The whole Dota community had assumed that the series for the Upper Bracket spot would be a clean 2-0 for Tundra. However Nouns shocked the world, and wiping Tundra 2 - 0 in their series instead.

In what Mike "MLPDotA" Le Phoenix and John "johnxfire" Nathan Fernandez described as "Turbo game drafts" both games had a bizarre series of heroes. But the drafts worked phenomenally for Nouns as Tundra couldn't handle their hero choices. Nouns drafted unique picks which paid off immensely in their respective games. Although both games weren't completely once sided, it seemed like Nouns had solutions to all of Tundra's plays.

The highlight of game one had to be Noun's offlaner David "Moo" Hull's Witch Doctor, which despite having had to lane against a Phoenix and a Sven, managed to come out unscathed. From there, it was Moo's Hand of Midas that allowed him to farm up and become a Maladict machine. On top of that, Héctor "K1" Rodríguez's infamous Naga Siren had uncontested farm. Which allowed for a near unkillable Naga that Tundra just could not handle. Even if their Sven, Doom and Earth Spirit managed to find good farm.

Game two featured a pretty standard draft from both teams, with the only exception being Nicolas "Gunnar" Lopez's mid Ogre Magi. Which although wasn't unheard of, it was definitely not expected. But the real star of the show was K1's Chaos Knight which, like in game one, went uncontested as Neta "33" Shapira's Dark Seer could not stay in lane. And with the recent 7.34d patch buffing Chaos Knight, its arguably scarier to fight against a fully farmed chaos Knight compared to a fully farmed Naga Siren.

Nouns got off to an insanely strong start in game two, even managing to get Midas' on Lelis' support Dark Willow, who used it to build into Aghanim's Scepter. From there, Nouns kept the pressure up, not allowing Tundra's Faceless Void and Invoker to get carried away. Using their Brewmaster's Bewlings and Chaos Knight Phantasms to safely push towers. Then, after one or two shaky fights, Nouns managed to take game two in a convincing manner.

Now, Nouns head to the Upper Bracket of The International while Tundra has to fight do or die in the Lower Bracket.

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