Tundra Esports are already guaranteed a top3 place finish at the ESL One Birmingham Major. We got to sit down with Ivan “Pure” Moskalenko the day after they knocked Team Falcons into the lower bracket.
How are you enjoying Birmingham so far?
Pure: I mean, I haven’t explored Birmingham yet because I’m just focused on Dota. Like we just play in scrims. We haven’t played that much. We’re just playing pubs and preparing for the games. And that’s it.
Sophie: Have you ever been to the UK before?
Pure: No, it’s my first time.
Sophie: OK, great! Well, I wanted to ask a little about your time playing in Tundra. You’ve been playing with them since January now?
Pure: I guess.
Credit: ESL
How do you find playing with Tundra instead of BetBoom?
Pure: I mean, I used to play in a European org before in Entity. I really like it, I would prefer to play in the european.org than some CIS org.
Sophie: How come?
Pure: I like the mentality of people. I like the mindset. I think there is more, even better, better players. Like for example, Topson. I mean, GPK in my previous team, he was very good too. But you know, Topson is a two-time TI winner. It’s very fun to play with him.
Would you say you’re learning from players like that?
Pure: I wouldn’t say so. It’s just very comfortable to work with him. I think we are in a good relationship and really like to work with him, like just working together. He’s learning something from me, I’m learning from him, I think. Just a good environment.
Sophie: So you’re getting like gradually better and better results overall.
Does that change your preparation for games?
Pure: I mean, preparation is the same, but I think we are just growing as a team. Like, during this tournament, especially making conclusions after games. How should we play? Like, where could we play better? We’re just watching replays together, like discussing some stuff after the games, like some item builds on some roles. And that’s it. Just trying to grow together.
Sophie: For sure, yeah. I wanted to ask about your series against Team Falcons yesterday. Obviously you had some pretty good Morph games there and I noticed that you seem to be a lot more active as a Morph player than a lot of people. You take early fights and became pretty unstoppable.
So how does that change your attitude in game?
Pure: I mean, yesterday was a really good day for us. First game was easy, then second game was super easy for us as well. But I played pretty bad. Like, there were some bad decisions we made as a team. They just kept running at us and it just kept getting worse after minute 20. So we played pretty bad.
Third game was better for us because we refreshed. We knew that the second game was pretty easy and we got a pretty easy win. So, I mean, these guys got more respect on Falcons for us.
They didn’t ban our Zeus, they didn’t ban my Morphling. So that’s what you get in the end.
Sophie: Yeah, that’s it. There have been quite a lot of people playing their comfort heroes this tournament. There are a lot of uncontested heroes. But Tundra don’t seem to be doing that as much.
Are you happier on comfort heroes or do you like to be unpredictable?
Pure: I think we like to play on our comfort heroes for sure. There are some heroes that we are really good on but people are starting to ban it every game. So, I mean, we’re ready to play on every single hero in Dota. I guess we kinda picked some Clinkz, as you say. It wasn’t randomly, it was prepared. But I mean, I’m down to play any hero in Dota. I think Topius is down to play it. So I mean, we’ll see how it’s gonna go, I guess.
Sophie: Falcons pulled out an Earth Spirit in your games, which isn’t something we’ve seen a lot of.
What were you thinking when you saw Earth Spirit drafted?
Pure: I mean, it’s kind of common, like Cr1t hero. He really likes his spirit a lot. It’s his comfortable hero. Like, no one’s really playing it on pos four, there are even some playing it mid no one’s really playing on pos four.
It’s very skill dependent, I think, here. Like, you really have to be good on it and you really have to have a good game on it. So I mean, we kind of were prepared for it and I mean, we didn’t scare that at all. I think it was actually bad.
Sophie: So now you’re guaranteed a top 3 finish at ESL One Birmingham Major.
If you could pick an opponent for the grand finals, who would you pick?
Pure: I mean, there is not that much teams left, right? There is only going to be the lower bracket finals with some random team plus BetBoom and play in the finals with them again maybe. Or I’m also down to play in the finals with Falcons again.
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