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BOOM Esports secure upper bracket at GAMERS GALAXY Dota 2 Invitational

BOOM Esports are off to a great start in the GAMERS GALAXY: Dota 2 Invitational Series Dubai 2022, as they swept the group stage to earn an upper bracket berth in the playoffs. (Photo: BOOM Esports)
BOOM Esports are off to a great start in the GAMERS GALAXY: Dota 2 Invitational Series Dubai 2022, as they swept the group stage to earn an upper bracket berth in the playoffs. (Photo: BOOM Esports)

BOOM Esports made a splash in their first day at the GAMERS GALAXY: Invitational Series Dubai 2022. The champions of this season's Winter Tour Regional Finals for Southeast Asia made their case for being one of the best teams in the world with a clean 3-0 sweep of the group stage.

BOOM Esports made short work of Team Secret, OG, and Nigma Galaxy SEA to claim the top seed of Group B and secure an upper bracket berth in the GAMERS GALAXY Invitational playoffs.

BOOM Esports outplay Team Secret

In their first game of the tournament, BOOM Esports went for a dual-core lineup with Souliya "JaCkky" Khoomphetsavong on a carry Kunkka and Erin Jasper "Yopaj" Ferrer on a mid Templar Assassin.

BOOM focused on elusive supports in their draft and took Weaver and Mirana, relying almost entirely on Saieful "Fbz" Ilham to lockdown enemies with Mars.

Team Secret’s strategy hinged entirely on buffing up Michał "Nisha" Jankowski on a carry Tiny. It was a classic Tiny-Io combo with captain Clement "Puppey" Ivanov on the Guardian Wisp. The rest of the team was in charge of making space until Nisha got online.

BOOM Esports were aware of Team Secret’s strategy and played hyper-aggressive during the game, a hallmark of Southeast Asian Dota. BOOM Esports took a 2,000 gold advantage lead by the end of the laning stage and that’s when they decided to ramp up the pressure.

Between the 12:30 and 13:30-minute marks, BOOM Esports managed to bring down Nisha twice, greatly slowing down his timing and allowing the BOOM cores to pull ahead in terms of net worth. Yopaj was more than 3,000 gold ahead of Nisha at the 15-minute mark, with JaCkky not far behind.

Tiny’s greatest strength in Dota 2 patch 7.31b is his incredible farming speed, by delaying his power spikes and out scaling him, Team Secret had no chance for a comeback and called it 29 minutes into the game.

Fbz truly is the Death Prophet

In their second game of the group stage, BOOM Esports took a page from Team Secret and drafted a carry Tiny for themselves.

Timothy John "Tims" Randrup and Rolen Andrei Gabriel "skem" Ong would provide all the stuns the team needed on Earthshaker and Bane respectively. The oddest pick for the draft was Fbz on offlane Death Prophet.

Nigma Galaxy SEA were a bit harder to understand, as they took a draft with no reliable stuns and a midlane Silencer for Aliwi "w33" Omar on the team.

NGX SEAs draft relied mostly on Vincent "AlaCrity" Hiew Teck Yoong to make space on the offlane Broodmother.

What NGX SEA needed was to snowball their lanes hard for them to win. Their draft lacked stuns and burst damage to get quick pickoffs and the team didn’t scale very well into the late game either. This lack of burst damage was especially problematic against Fbz’ Death Prophet, who could self-sustain himself if left alone.

It was a pure out-draft by BOOM Esports as there were no answers for the team’s multiple stuns, teamfight abilities, and overall durability of the heroes. Nigma Galaxy SEA’s desperate Roshan attempt 39 minutes in the game cost them all their heroes in return for a kill on skem’s Bane.

BOOM Esports down OG in 22 minutes

BOOM Esports and OG had similar drafts in their final game of the day, with both teams emphasizing their laning stage to snowball to victory.

BOOM Esports took offlane Mars and Weaver, a high damage duo that is also difficult to bring down. Yopaj took Templar Assassin for the second time in the day in the midlane while the safe lane saw Riki and Disruptor together.

OG put Ammar "ATF" Al-Assaf on the safe lane, playing Mars, his most picked competitive hero. Stand-in Evgenii "Chuvash" Makarov would support him on the Position 5 Io.

Bozhidar "bzm" Bogdanov took Storm for the midlane, no doubt expected to create space for the team after the laning stage.

Meanwhile top lane featured carry player Artem "Yuragi" Golubiev on Ursa, being supported by Tommy "Taiga" Le’s Shadow Shaman.

Both teams achieved their goal of winning the offlane, but not to the same extent. While Yuragi was top of his team’s net worth 10 minutes in, the offlane combo only managed to get a single kill on skem’s Disruptor.

ATF, on the other hand, was brought down four times in the first seven minutes of the game. This led to him having less net worth than Tims on the support Weaver.

OG needed bzm to crush the midlane to have any hope of controlling the game; unfortunately for them, Yopaj was able to get a solo kill on bzm and proved to be a big nuisance past the laning stage.

This led to BOOM Esports having a 5,000 gold lead only 13 minutes in. With both teams relying on winning the laning stage to win the game, OG had no chance for a comeback and tapped out in 22 minutes, the second-fastest game of the day after Tundra beat TSM in 17.

All BOOM Esports players performed phenomenally during their matches, but if we had to pick an MVP it would have to be Yopaj.

He had a clean 17-kill, 12-assist performance on Templar Assassin against Team Secret; 11 kills and 14 assists against two deaths on Queen of Pain versus Nigma Galaxy SEA; and another perfect 14-kill, 8-assist showing on Templar Assassin against OG. That's 42 kills and 34 assists against only two deaths across three games for Yopaj.

With their spot in the playoffs already secure, BOOM Esports will take the second day of the group stage off and will return to play in the opening round of the playoffs on 4 March.

The Top 3 teams of each group will advance to The GAMERS GALAXY Invitational playoffs while the bottom two will be eliminated.

The Top 2 teams of each group will start the playoffs in the upper bracket semifinals while the third and fourth-placed teams will proceed to a best of three play-in, where the winners will proceed to the lower bracket of the playoffs. The tournament will conclude with a best-of-five grand finals.

The GAMERS GALAXY Invitational features some of the best Dota 2 teams in the world competing in a LAN for their cut of the AED1,000,000 (over US$270,000) prize pool from 2 to 6 March.

BOOM Esports roster:

  1. Souliya "JaCkky" Khoomphetsavong

  2. Erin Jasper "Yopaj" Ferrer

  3. Saieful "Fbz" Ilham

  4. Timothy John "Tims" Randrup

  5. Rolen Andrei Gabriel "skem" Ong

Otomo is a long-time gaming enthusiast and caster. He has been playing games since he was 10 and is the biggest Dota 2 fan.

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