BLAST the traditional tournament organizer of CSGO majors, took its first step in venturing into DOTA 2 Esports with their new Blast Dota series. The BLAST Bounty Hunt boasts a whopping 145,000 USD prize pool but along with unique twists to the tournament format.
© BLAST Dota
The participating teams are given 15,000 USD each as an initial cash pool. While special exception is reserved for the top two seeds, who each receives 20,000 USD cash pool instead. In each series, the winner takes 40% of the loser’s cash pool. As per usual, all games are best-of-three series while the grand finals is a best-of-five.
It’s go big or go home as the stakes are exponentially higher as teams progress deeper into the playoffs. Apart from the active cash pools that each team holds dearly, there are 4 “bounties” or quests that teams can accomplish in their games.
Completing these bounties gives the winner a bountiful cash reward, which is not added into their active cash pool. Thus, it’s certainly worth the effort to prioritize the bounty, especially when there’s one that rewards a hefty 20,000 USD.
The tournament features 6 European teams and consists of 2 divisions, the top seeds and bottom seeds. The top seeds are Team Secret and Team OG, who each started with 20,000 USD cash pool and skipped the first upper bracket round.
The bottom seeds consist of the other 4 participants: Team Liquid, Nigma, Alliance and Ninjas in Pyjamas. These teams had to play the first round of upper bracket games. Winners of the first round proceed to face the top seeds. It’s not all gloom and doom for the bottom seeds. Optimistically, these teams get the first attempt at completing the bounties.
Two of the “easy” bounties were claimed quickly. Team Nigma collected the “VIP” bounty, which required them to keep one team member alive for an entire game. Nigma has a good record of keeping Amer “Miracle–” Al-Barkawi alive, so the quest was easy-breezy.
Meanwhile, Alliance completed the “What’s Mine is Mine” bounty too. It is much simpler whereby Alliance only had to prevent its opponents from capturing their outpost. With the two lowest reward bounties completed, the other teams can look forward to completing two other high-reward bounties.
However, let’s just say besides being rather difficult tasks, these are incredibly sinister too. The “Drop the Dead Donkey” bounty rewards 15,000 USD, which requires the party to kill more than 8 couriers in a game.
The biggest bounty of them all, rewarding 20,000 USD upon completion, is the “Something Something Feeder” bounty. This quest requires the team to kill a single enemy player 20 times in a game!
The past 2 weeks of ESL One Birmingham 2020 has been rough for both team OG and its fans after enduring a 5-loss streak. It certainly wasn’t the roster debut that fans expected, especially with Topias Miikka “Topson” Taavitsainenand and Johan “N0tail” Sundstein in the picture. We already bashed enough on OG this past week.
Fortunately, fans would be delighted to know that team OG is finally looking like themselves. Their series versus Alliance was a brilliant showcase of brute force, featuring Martin “Saksa” Sazdov, who played support Windranger. The mad archer was responsible for landing perfect Shackle Shots that sent Alliance players to their graves.
With both Team OG and Secret claiming victories at respective games, we can expect the highly-anticipated clash at the semifinals. The two powerhouses will be fighting for the first grand finalist spot and 40% of the lather’s cash pool.
Furthermore, the lower bracket games are just as exciting, especially with the presence of high-caliber teams like Alliance, Team Liquid and Nigma. Speaking of Nigma, if you are looking to put some stakes on their games, these Esports betting sites are reliable starters.
Nigma, more specifically former Team Liquid, is notable for its lower bracket runs along with its catchphrase “Upper brackets are for b!tch@$”. Of course, if you need advice on Dota 2 odds, we got you covered too.
Catch these teams live at BLAST Dota Twitch channel from June 9-13.
Read next: Will the BLAST Premier Spring 2020 Finals dethrone NaVi?
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