Shopify Rebellion are one victory away from DreamLeague S23

Shopify Rebellion are currently competing in the North American qualifier for DreamLeague S23. This is a Dota 2 tournament that features eight teams from the region, most of which are completely unknown. The only serious contenders are Rebellion and nouns.

The two teams were supposed to meet in the upper bracket Final but nouns somehow lost against Apex Genesis. This team features one of the best Romanian players, BNC, but they were not expected to defeat an opponent whose captain won four Majors and placed 3^rd at The International 2018.

Because nouns dropped to the lower bracket before reaching the upper bracket Final, Rebellion had a very easy match and are now waiting in the Grand Final. The winner of this match will qualify for DreamLeague S23.

Shopify Rebellion’s path to the Grand Final

Another 2-0 win secures our spot in the Grand Finals tomorrow!

GG’s to Apex Genesis 🤝#SRWIN pic.twitter.com/zT47UmLpOa

— Shopify Rebellion (@ShopifyRebels) March 22, 2024

In the first match of the tournament, Shopify encountered La Correntada, a team made up of players from the US, Peru, and Uruguay. Arteezy’s team picked very aggressive heroes and simply destroyed their opponents in 21 minutes. This happened in both games.

In game 1, Chen, Monkey King, and Tiny were picked to ensure a fast-forming snowball. In game 2, Shopify chose to pick some slightly more late-game-oriented heroes, such as Terrorblade, but they ended up doing the same thing as in game 1. Each time, by the 10-minute mark, Shopify had accumulated a massive gold lead that was impossible to reverse.

In the second match of the qualifier, team_monkeys- tried to stop Arteezy but had to fight into an angry Razor twice. And both times, they lost in ~35 minutes. Their heroes were quite creative, with picks like Pudge, Brewmaster, and Puck. But Shopify were well prepared.

In the upper bracket Final, Apex Genesis picked Pangolier (twice), Pugna, and a lot of other peculiar heroes. However, they lost the lanes pretty hard and their picks proved to be incapable of recovering during the mid portion of the game.

When you have Pugna on your team, you’re supposed to win the lanes pretty hard and then take down tier 1 towers to further extend your advantage. Instead, by the 10-minute mark, Shopify’s number of kills was already impressive in both games. This led to an easy victory for Arteezy.

But now he’ll have to either do it again against Apex Genesis, or possibly versus nouns. It all depends on who wins the lower bracket Final.

Header: ESL