“Next Game Will Be Different”: Nine Reveals How Tundra Beat PSG.LGD

The Tundra midlaner explained how his team bounced back from a dismal second game performance 

The Dota 2 ESL One Berlin Major's main event phase kicked off this week, with all four upper bracket matches played in succession on the first day. The final best-of-three series of the day pitted Tundra Esports, the reigning TI champions, against China's PSG.LGD.

The last series for today is @TundraEsports vs @PSGLGD_!

Tundra have only lost 2 games throughout the entire event; will LGD be able to double it and move on to the next person? #ESLOne

💜 https://t.co/jKNcjqCY84
❤️ https://t.co/6B3Zj2PGzZ pic.twitter.com/wr4O9oq27Y

— ESL Dota2 (@ESLDota2) May 1, 2023

The teams produced a nail-biting showdown, as both of them were desperate for a win to help their Top 6 prospects. After an intense best-of-three series, it was Tundra who came out as the winner, with Oliver “skiter” Lepko's Sven and Leon “Nine” Kirilin's Void Spirit leading the charge. With the dust settled on their impressive win against PSG.LGD, Tundra Esports are now looking to continue their winning streak in their match against Serbian outfit 9 Pandas.

Ted “Pyrion” Forsyth caught up with Nine for a post-match interview after Tundra's victory over PSG.LGD, where they discussed Tundra's methods for defeating their Chinese rivals, their remarkable proficiency in acquiring more gold than other teams in the Major, and a host of other compelling talking points. 

At first, they talked about PSG.LGD’s dominant second game display and how Tundra turned things around in the final game. 

“Game 2 was rough but the only thing that made it really rough was the Naga [Siren] pick, honestly. They are really good at playing the map with Naga and it completely stopped us from doing any plays. We didn’t feel like we had any opening so we just went into Game 3 thinking, ‘F*ck it. They just had some good [idea] of Naga. Next game will be different and we’re going to play a different game and have it in our control again.”

Nine also discussed Tundra’s prolific gold-scoring strategy. Everyone on the team is scoring a lot of gold. While this is good news for Tundra as a whole, is any player sacrificing his potential gold count to make others score more? 

“It’s me. I guess everyone likes to fight in the team. Sneyking used to be a core player. Saksa is not like a core player, but right now it just feels like, [since] the map is so huge and has many camps, it’s really abusable when you can get farm [sic], so we just pick [up the gold] because it feels good and it feels right.”