Team Spirit Takes Down T1 in Close Games in ESL One Fall 2021 Opener

Team Spirit and T1 have started their ESL One Fall 2021: Bootcamp Edition campaigns with two fierce games. Despite both teams' efforts, Team Spirit was the superior team at the end of the BO2 series, outperforming T1 in multiple departments to win 2-0. Since the patch is new, both teams were apparently testing strategies, but Team Spirit clearly had the better execution during teamfights. In both games, Magnus proved to be a clutch hero for them. Today, both teams will play another BO2 series. T1 will play Tundra Esports, while Team Spirit plays Virtus.pro in a CIS battle.

Team Spirit vs T1: Match Recap and Highlights

Recap

In Game 1, both teams engaged in small skirmishes at regular intervals. Neither team gained an advantage in the first 25 minutes before Team Spirit won a massive teamfight and became the aggressors. Nonetheless, T1 pulled it back, bringing the lead to zero. As a result of their lack of synergy in teamfights, T1 could not stand toe to toe and ultimately lost 40 minutes.

In Game 2, a strong early to mid-game draft allowed T1 to take a lead in the first 15 minutes. Even though they had a ton of kills, Team Spirit's cores turned the game around with impeccable teamfighting execution. These fights happened a few times, assisting Team Spirit in securing the megacreeps. T1 held onto the base for an extended period of time, finding important kills to keep the enemy at bay. The megacreep hold, however, proved too tough as T1 eventually lost after 60 minutes.

Highlights

Here are some highlights of the series.

As they picked a lot of teamfighting heroes, Team Spirit seemed to have an edge with their drafting today. This inherent advantage allowed them to pick and choose their fights, enabling them to bounce back even when they were a little behind.

T1 remained loyal to the Templar Assassin, the hero from the previous patch but was heavily nerfed in the current patch, 7.30, for both games. Despite looking strong in the early patches, the hero did not seem to be as strong in the latter stages as it had been recently. T1 did well, but Team Spirit simply played better.

It was the first series of the ESL One Fall 2021 group stage that began on 21st August, and will continue until 24th August, 2021 after which the playoff games will begin.