South America is well known to produce talent, however mainly within the first person shooter genre. We rarely see players from minor regions pushing towards high tournament placings, but there are two teams that put their trust in the region. Today we will see Thunder Awaken and TSM’s rise to power in the Stockholm ESL One Major.
Before the Stockholm ESL One Major the highest place a South American representative achieved was top eight in 2019. After a long wait of four years, a full peruvian team “Thunder Awaken” and a single peruvian player “Timado” on the TSM roster, have a shot at greatness.
Thunder Awaken came as a not well known team that qualified via the DPC format or “Dota Pro Circuit”, a movement started to provide better infrastructure in minor and major regions. After a very disappointing Invitational finishing 17th, they have won Tour 1 and Tour 2 of the Dota Pro Circuit convincingly pushing them directly to the ESL One Major.
The roster comprised of “Pakazs”, “Darkmago”, “Sacred”, “Matthew”, and “Pandaboo” is well known as an extremely aggressive Dota 2 team. This playstyle is not only within the game itself, as the most effective strategy for them is peculiar drafting. A Lot of teams have not been able to deal with the aggressiveness both in preparation via draft and in game, making their games quite fast paced, normally below the thirty five minute mark.
Lastly we have Timado, he is a staple player within the south american community. Quite young at the age of 22 he has played the game competitively since he was 13. After jumping between local teams, he landed a spot on the north american team “Team Freedom” where he would attend international events including the 2021 International. Sadly Team Freedom went on hiatus making him once more a free agent, where after a couple of gigs he got into the TSM roster. TSM, currently fighting the lower brackets, will be looking to continue their run in form.
