Nouns sends Team Spirit to the Lower Bracket at TI13

Nouns pulled off the biggest upset at The International 13, taking down reigning champions Team Spirit in a convincing 2-0 victory. Spirit was undefeated in the group stage, while the North American squad finished bottom of their group.

The surprising result mirrors last year's International, which saw Nouns defeat the then champions Tundra Esports in the seeding match and send them to the lower bracket.

Nouns took down Team Spirit with the same draft two games in a row

A rough start for Team Spirit(Credit: PGL).

The North American team believed that overwhelming teamfight would lead them to success and drafted accordingly. Snapfire and Treant Protector for Rodrigo "Lelis" Santos and Tal "Fly" Aizik respectively offered an impressive amount of control and damage between the two. Sand King added more magic damage, while Yuma "Yuma" Langlet on Luna provided late game security for the team.

The only change picking Mars in game two and Earthshaker in game one.  The two heroes are identical in function, with both having long range disables and big teamfight ultimates.

Despite Spirit getting a solid laning stage in both games, they simply had no counter for all the AoE effects Nouns brought and lost control of the game around the 20 minute mark.

Gunnar isn't keen on playing Gaimin Gladiators early in the group stage

Gaimin Gladiators before their TI12 granfinals.(Credits: Valve)

With the series over, Nicolas "Gunnar" Lopez had a quick post-game interview to discuss how the series went.

While Luna isn't exactly out of the meta, she is considerably less contested than Mirana and Lina, the two carry heroes Spirit picked in the series.

Gunnar explained that his team believes Luna is the superior choice over Lina right now, "I think with the damage facet, Luna does incredible damage, scales really well with the 25 talent as well. She usually builds tankier items late-game, so post BKB, heroes survive so long with Pipe, auras, that when the BKBs are down, I think Luna just wins with magic damage over Lina."

Nouns will face off against Gaimin Gladiators or G2.IG, depending on who wins the seeding match. When asked who they would rather play against, Gunnar was looking to avoid the team that eliminated them last year, at least for now.

"Probably G2, I think they are a really fun team. Also Gaimin Gladiators last year was a rough one for us, so it would be nice to play a different team for TI"

It'll be interesting to see just how far Nouns can go, the team is full of surprises and lets hope the have a few more in store.

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Featured Image Source: Nouns