You can probably lock in the outcome when Lord Gaben offers you a 0% chance to recover from a game that feels as horrible to watch as it presumably feels to play. That was the extent of Tundra Esports‘ crushing victory over Team Secret in the upper bracket finals of The International 2022, destroying what had been a competitive series up until that point.

Contrary to the Team Aster vs. Team Liquid series, Secret and Tundra are exceptionally close and have been playing as such from the beginning. Up until Tundra went berserk in game three, destroying all opposition with Nine's Tusk and 33's Enigma, neither side completely crushed the other.

The Match Recap

The focus of Tundra's first game was to play the long game slowly in order to push lanes and eventually defeat Secret by outscaling their teamfight-focused pick. Resolut1on's Dawnbreaker and Crystallis' Drow Ranger, the latter of which recorded the ninth Rampage in TI main stage history, helped Secret fight back with a more balanced strategy that allowed them to dictate the tempo, quickly recover from slight errors, and drive through Tundra's lines.

In the inaugural TI of the company, Tundra would seal the first place in the grand finals of the series with a convincing game three victory.

According to Saksa, “I felt that the game was kind of done in the first 15 minutes.” “The game was kind of overextended. People were a little bit more cautious than usual because it was the last game to qualify for the finals, but it seemed like the game was done relatively quickly.

As a result, Secret will now have to contend with a hot MATUMBAMAN and Team Liquid in the lower bracket finals. A match between the two teams that advanced to TI11 via the Last Chance Qualifier and shown that possibly the more Dota you play, the more ready you are for the main event.

Puppey will actually play more games in that series with two Liquid players than he does with his whole current team combined (1,068 games with Matu and zai versus 1,047 games with Secret's current four players).

What Comes Next?

In the meantime, Tundra keeps completely dominating TI11. They were the top seed from Group B going into the main event, and after three upper-bracket series, they had only lost one game—to Secret today.

Along with being a match between former colleagues, Saksa defeated Reso to go to the TI finals. The rest of Tundra's roster and Nine are competing in their first TI finals, whereas both players were a part of the Digital Chaos team that placed second at TI6.

The Aegis of Champions will go to a WEU team regardless of who wins the championship game, however Tundra is currently the clear favorite.