Welcome to EGamersWorld.
We continue to watch the action at ESL One Birmingham 2024. The group stage of this season's first LAN tournament is heating up and we're ready to watch the second day of play.
Opening it up in Group A will be G2.IG and Falcons. On paper the teams look unequal, but anything can happen in Bo2, as we have seen with Talon Esports.
We are trying to understand how the position of the teams in the standings will change after this match and whether any of the pair G2.IG - Falcons will be able to get a clean win here.
Let's go.
Falcons form
Let's open the match analysis with an analysis of the Falcons' form. In this match they play as favourites with odds to win at 1.8.
The tag is not a new one, but they have not been able to achieve much fame since coming to Dota 2 a few years ago. All they did was to play in the local Saudi eLeague. They played there in 2020, with the top 6 and in 2021, with the top 3 and top 1 respectively.
After a pause of a year, decided to return to the professional scene after Valve cancelled the DPC system. Breaking in with a leg.
- Falcons roster: skiter, SumaiL, ATF, Cr1t, Sneyking.
When collecting the roster, we went by the principle of "golden lineup". We managed to get two players from Tundra Esports, and at the same time champions of The International 2023 Skiter and Sneyking, Cr1t, who previously played for Shopify Rebellion and previously for EG, ATF, who showed a good performance last season in PSG Quest and before that in Nigma with OG, and closed everything with a promising mid laner Marl1ne.
In the MENA region, where Falcons are based, this squad has no competition even at the skilla level. As it happens, the Falcons have already clinched their ticket to Kuala Lumpur 2023.
First, they passed the open qualification without any difficulty, and then, again without much trouble, slammed the closed part of the qualifiers. In the final, by the way, they beat PSG Quest by a score of 3-1. What one and two are doing in the MENA region is not entirely clear, but come on.
At Pinnacle: 25 Year Anniversary Show Falcons look very confident so far, which is to be expected. They have already earned their place in the play-offs by coming out of Group B in first place without losing a single game in three matches.
The Falcons started their appearance in the Pinnacle play-offs: 25 Year Anniversary Show with a first round match against Level Up. An easy win took the Falcons to The dudley boys and there the Falcons got their first and only loss of the tournament. They were beaten by The dudley boys, who were given a rematch by the Falcons in the grand final.
In the end, the Pinnacle: 25 Year Anniversary Show Falcons took first place and earned $50,000. The triumph at the local championship was the Falcons' first win in the discipline. But not the last.
After winning at Pinnacle, Falcons finished top 6 at ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023 and then started to dominate. In 2024, they won 3 qualifiers: at BB Dacha, at DreamLeague Season 22 and ESL One Birmingham at their home in the MENA region.
Just before competing at DL Season 22, Falcons became BB Dacha champions, earning $400,000.
After the Falcons played at DreamLeague Season 22. They showed the highest level of play and pocketed another trophy by beating BB 3-0 in the grand finals. They made it to the Elite League finals, but couldn't win there: Xtreme Gaming were stronger and won the final with a score of 3-1.
The first day of the group stage of ESL One Birmingham 2024 Falcons finished with the score 2-2, which is not a good result.
Falcons' most popular heroes
Io (6 matches, 66% wins), Death Prophet (5 matches, 60% wins), Chen (5 matches, 60% wins), Dawnbreaker (4 matches, 75% wins), Earth Spirit (4 matches, 75% wins) appeared in spades most often.
Form G2.IG.
We continue our match breakdown with an analysis of G2.IG's match form. In this match, they are playing as the number two with win odds around 6.8.
In the first round of DPC 2023 Invictus Gaming took the top 6, almost losing their place in the top division, but they got through. Naturally, Major e was out of the question.
In the second round of DPC 2023: China Upper Division there was no talk about Major e either, but somehow Invictus Gaming got there. The team made it to the top-3 in the home league, only to fall to the ground: Invictus Gaming finished in the top-18 at Berlin Major 2023.
The third season of DPC gave hope for an IG comeback. IG went to Bali with a top-2 DPC in their pocket, but the curtain came down. The team finished top-18, thus failing to confirm their status as the top-2 team in China.
- IG lineup: Monet, NothingToSay, JT-, BoBoKa, xNova.
After a series of failures, which can be attributed to the failure at the qualifiers for The International 2023, IG completely rebuilt the roster, inviting all the top players from the region. Now the team has a lot of potential to fulfil.
The renewed G2.IG squad showed great results in the group stage of ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023. The Chinese took the top 1 in Group B Ledgeiv on only one map. In the first play-offs match, G2.IG faced Gaimin Gladiators. In an intense match, one of last season's top teams, GG, proved to be stronger and closed out the series with a 2-1 score.
Falling to the bottom grid of Kuala Lumpur 2023 the team lost to BB Team and left the championship. As a result, G2.IG finished in the top 8 at the first major tournament of the season.
Next, G2.IG played 3 qualifying tournaments. BB Dacha 2024: CN and SEA Closed Qualifiers, where they finished top 8, DL Season 22: China Qualifier, where they finished top 2 and ESL One Birmingham 2024: China Closed Qualifier, where they finished first.
DreamLeague Season 22 G2.IG got off to a terrible start. The team played two series and lost both of them with the score 0-2. The second day was much better - already two draws. However, it didn't allow them to stay afloat: after the third game day, where G2.IG played a draw with BB and lost to Azure Ray, the team lost their chances to qualify for the play-offs.
After the failure at DreamLeague Season 22, G2.IG played two qualifying events: DreamLeague Season 23 China Qualifier and PGL Wallachia. They couldn't make it to the first one, but they will go to Romania after winning the qualifiers against Azure Ray.
The last tournament before the ESL One Birmingham 2024 was Elite League, where G2.IG took the top 8, Ledge and Gaimin Gladiators.
G2.IG finished the first day of ESL One Birmingham 2024 with a score of 3-1, temporarily taking the first place in their group.
History of head-to-head meetings between G2.IG and Falcons
Previously the teams have played each other three times and so far there is complete parity between the teams. One win for Falcons, one for G2.IG and one draw.
Predicted result of Falcons - G2.IG at ESL One Birmingham 2024
In this match, I don't see Falcons winning as clear-cut as the bookmakers are giving them. Malr1ne's replacement has had a significant impact on Falcons, as we saw on the first day, but G2.IG are looking very buoyant on the contrary. All in all, I'll give them one card for sure.
Bottom line: +1.5 on G2.IG.
