Road to TI12: Gaimin Gladiators

The International 2023 will bring together the best Dota 2 teams of this season, 20 of them in total. Among them, Gaimin Gladiators is one of the favorites.

Their regular season was nearly perfect. They won all three Majors and finished Dota Pro Circuit in 2^nd place with 2140 points, just 10 points below Team Liquid. Normally, they would have won the race. But the fact that they didn’t win a single Tour in Western Europe’s Division I dragged them down a bit.

At the international level, however, Gladiators proved to be almost unbeatable. They won five different tournaments and are now expected to finish in the top three at The International 12.

Gaimin Gladiators’ results

In 2023, Gaimin Gladiators obtained the following results:

• Tour 1: 2^nd place
• Tour 2: 3^rd place
• Tour 3: 2^nd place
• Lima Major: 1^st place
• Berlin Major: 1^st place
• Bali Major: 1^st place
• DreamLeague S19: 1^st place
• DreamLeague S20: 1^st place
• Riyadh Masters: 4^th place

Arguably, their only disappointing result was the one from Riyadh Masters. And the only reason why it’s disappointing is that they had won every international event until that point. If we don’t take this aspect into account, Gladiators did really well in Riyadh and received $1.2 million for their achievement.

The way it feels to not be playing in those hell of TI qualifiers pic.twitter.com/t4jmOPh9bm

— GG | Gaimin Gladiators ⚔️ (@GaiminGladiator) August 29, 2023

Gaimin Gladiators’ strengths

This team has many strengths and it seems that only world-class opponents can realistically beat them at this point. They crumble from time to time under the pressure of big LAN matches, but the combined experience and prowess of the members are good enough to guarantee that they won’t mess up at TI12.

Last season, Gladiators had some really good results and even finished Tour 2 in 2^nd place in Western Europe. They placed 4^th at ESL One Stockholm Major and 9^th-12^th at TI11. But something was missing.

After Quinn “Quinn” Callahan joined the team, everything changed for the better. At that point, everyone knew that the former midlaner wasn’t as good as the new one. The synergy worked so much better in the new roster format.

Quinn’s vast experience helped Gladiators to rise to the top of Dota 2. But he is not the only member of the roster who’s exceptionally good at what he does. Marcus “Ace” Hoelgaard, for instance, is a former Team Secret member. So he’s very familiar with how the best captains think.

Header: ESL