Cover-Credits:
Gaimin Gladiators 2023 rocked the Dota 2 pro scene in 2023 and was undoubtedly one of the best teams. In 2023, Gaimin Gladiators won three majors, including the two DreamLeague titles, and the first-ever iteration of BetBoom Dacha. Gaimin was also the runner-up for The International 2023 and the ESL One Kuala Lumpur 2023.
After such a successful year in 2023, Gaimin has failed to replicate its success in 2024. In a post-game interview with Neal "Tsunami" Khandheria at the DreamLeague Season 22, Gaimin Gladiators’ offlaner Marcus "Ace" Christensen said Gaimin was going through the roughest patch in its history.
Gaimin Gladiators’ Dark Days?
During the interview Gaimin Gladiators’ Ace touched upon how the team is in a rut. He said, “I feel like we've been pretty far down in the pit honestly lately like I feel like it's one of the roughest periods for us on the team actually in terms of trying a lot of things and stuff like not working out trying to find a play style also taking a lot of losses like you can kind of get mad at each other pretty easily so it's been a bit rough lately.”
Ace further added, “It’s been like a rollercoaster, it's pretty much up and down. Uh, we're just trying to find our pace right now. It's honestly been very hard, uh… but uh… it's going better. I think uh we tanked a lot of losses lately so can learn a lot from these losses and I feel like we're just working on everything honestly.”
Starting the year off with BetBoom Dacha 2024 Dubai, Gaimin Gladiators was seemingly performing worse than last year and was eliminated from the tournament with a 5th-6th standing. This was a surprise to many.
However, Gaimin Gladiators’ performance at the ongoing DreamLeague so far has also been subpar compared to its previous year’s performance. It barely managed to qualify for the second phase of the group stage and things are looking pretty rough for Gaimin in Group Stage 2 as well.
Currently, two teams — Shopify Rebellion and Aurora — have already gone home and Gaimin is sitting in the third position, with one foot out the door, in a tie with OG. However, Team Spirit and Xtreme Gaming also have the same scores in series wins and may take Gaimin or OG’s place at the table. If Gaimin loses against Xtreme Gaming with a 0-2 score , Gaimin will leave the tournament. This four-way tie at the group stage 2 of DreamLeague Season 22 is only adding more to the suspense of the tournament as it could be anyone’s tournament to win.
