Fortunately for North American teams, the two scary giants, Quincy Crew and Evil Geniuses, have both qualified for The International 10 by ranking high enough to receive direct invitations to the tournament. Quincy finished 4th while Evil Geniuses finished 1st. This means that a lot of weaker teams will now get a real chance of securing a ticket for the biggest esports event in their history.
TI 10 North America Qualifier Details
The North America Qualifier for The International 10 is scheduled to take place between June 30th – July 3rd. The tournament features 11 teams and uses the double-elimination format. Eight teams will start in the Upper Bracket while the other 3 will start in the Lower Bracket.
Here’s a complete list of the 11 participants:
- Undying
- 4 Zoomers
- Simply TOOBASED
- sadboys
- Black N Yellow
- D2 Hustlers
- Arkosh Gaming
- The Cut
- Team DogChamp
- Felt
- 5ManMidas
Among these teams, 5 of them are worth following and analyzing: Undying, 4 Zoomers, sadboys, simply TOOBASED, and D2 Hustlers.
Favorites
Here’s a brief analysis of the most important competitors in this tournament.
Undying
With a stable roster that has been competing as a unit for a long time, exceptional players, strong leadership, and a great track record, Undying enters the tournament with a huge chance to win it. This team is by far the strongest in the race and probably wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for Evil Geniuses and Quincy Crew.
Undying finished 3rd in both seasons of DPC 2021. In Season 1 they had 6 wins and 1 loss, but then got defeated in the tiebreaker by both EG and Quincy. During the regular season, however, they had managed to beat Quincy (2 – 1).
Season 2 finished in a similar fashion. Only this time, Undying lost against both teams and finished the round-robin with 5 wins and 2 losses.
Unfortunately for Undying, North America received only two Major tickets per season. So the team never got any exposure to the international scene even though it performed really well regionally. And in the end, the 400 points it earned were not enough to secure a direct invite to TI 10. The threshold was 800 points.
Undying’s roster consists of 5 strong players: Timado, Bryle, SabeRLight-, Moonmeander, and Dubu. Combined, they constitute a powerful team that’s very hard to beat. In particular, Dubu’s contribution is decisive. There aren’t that many South Koreans in Dota 2, but the few that picked Dota over League of Legends are certainly very good at what they do.
4 Zoomers
4 Zoomers is full of famous American players. If you’ve been following the NA scene for at least a few years then you’ve probably heard of Brax and Gunnar. The other three members, Sammyboy, ocean, and Husky are not unknowns either.
Similar to Undying, 4 Zoomer’s fate in the NA region was doomed from the start. Quincy Crew and Evil Geniuses were unbeatable, so it was always a battle for 3rd place. 4 Zoomers never won that battle and had to settle for 4th place. And that’s how they ended up the year with 200 points.
4 Zoomers start this qualifier for The International 10 with the second chance. I don’t think they can beat Undying but they have a good chance of playing in the Grand Final.
sadboys
This is a very interesting team with a lot of strong players. It looks nothing like the sadboys that started DPC 2021 because apart from Moo, the entire roster has changed during the year. What this means is that sadboys’ past results are now completely irrelevant and all that matters is how well these 5 players can synergize with each other.
In many ways, sadboys have the necessary ingredients to threaten the other favorites. But I still think they lack a strong captain. Another issue with this team is that it has EternaLEnVy. And I don’t remember a single roster that Envy was a part of that didn’t crash and burn for some reason. On the bright side though, he’s definitely a highly skilled carry player and may end up carrying his team to an unexpected qualification to The International 10.
simply TOOBASED
This team started the year in the Lower Division, which they won with a perfect record of 7 consecutive wins. In Season 2 they finished 5th in the Upper Division, a sign that some potential to at least be dangerous against the other top NA teams exists in their roster.
The members of TOOBASED are boris, iAnnihilate, monkeys-forever, 5up, and empyreaN. Some of them are well-known while others still need to make a name for themselves. But they’re all highly experienced players who constantly compete against the world’s best in pubs.
One of the weak points of TOOBASED is their position 4 player, 5up. It’s not entirely clear how good he is but more importantly, his transfer took place on June 21st. This means that his team had less than 10 days to fully integrate him. And that’s hard to do at this competitive level.
D2 Hustlers
The 5th team that’s worth following during this tournament is D2 Hustlers. These guys had to qualify for the Lower Division and were only able to do it for Season 2. But once they were there, they dominated the competition and finished with 7 consecutive wins.
D2 Hustlers has a lot of unknown players. But it also has one Dota 2 legend: 1437. This guy really knows how to draft and analyze games. Throughout his career, he’s been a coach, an analyst, a captain, and a regular player. Some of the great teams he was a part of are Secret, TNC, Cloud9, and mousesports.
When you combine 1437’s expertise with the other players’ ambition, you get a potential dark horse. So you should definitely keep an eye on D2 Hustlers during the North American Qualifier for The International 10.
Photo credit: Valve