T1 vs OB.Neon: Favourite to start the new year with a solid win

South-East Asia's first DPC league of the 2021/22 season continues on Wednesday, January 05. T1 and OB.Neon will meet in the first match of the day of the elite division.

DPC SEA 2021/22 Tour 1: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament from December 01, 2021, to January 22, 2022. The top eight teams from the SEA region will battle it out for $205,000. On top of the cash prizes, the teams will also fight for three entries to the majors and the crucial DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

T1 got their new season off to a flying start, as evidenced by their results in the first two weeks of the DPC league. In the first contest, they were beaten 2-0 by TNC, and in the second contest, they were challenged by SMG that now looks like the elite but not good enough for T1. Another 2-0 win and the lead on par with BOOM.

The third game of the season for Team T1 was postponed due to the lags of the Dota 2 servers, and it's still unknown on what date. Not held a game with MTG, but so far, I can not see the opponents that can stop the current T1. I see the struggle only with BOOM, but before that game is still far away. The Neon team, although they performed well at the Huya Winter Invitational, the T1 level teams were nowhere near there.

The T1 team had a great season for themselves last season. They qualified for TI10, earned a million dollars, and finished 7-9 in the year's main tournament. All the top achievements of the organization are connected with LoL, but now there was some progress in Dota 2.

The squad is fully intact, and why change anything when 23savage is dragging, and everyone is successfully helping him with it. The T1 squad is the reigning champion of the Asian DPC league and a participant in The International 10, which is already the highest achievement for this Korean organization in Dota 2. 23savage has finally found his team. It is ready to take on the Asian DPC scene and the world. This team is the main favorite in SEA in the new season, but it is important to keep winning.

Now the opponent is inferior in class, so it is worth winning confidently and going into the break in a good mood.

Fans of Chinese and Asian Dota 2 will be watching the Huya Winter Invitational in the last week of 2021, which has become a tradition. At this event, OB.Neon suddenly found themselves in the top 3 of the tournament, but they were never expected to be the odds-on favorite or surprise team to win the tournament in the first place. The Filipinos beat a revamped Team Aster (2-0), and even Royal Never Give Up (2-1), an extremely steep result. The guys go 0-3 in the SEA DPC, being the main contenders for relegation to the second division.

The Filipinos started the new DPC cycle with a game against BOOM (0-2). One of the favourites, the Neons could not counter anything, although the second card was close. In the second week was the game Execration (1:2), which was arch-important with the aim in general of survival in the elite division of SEA, but losing the principal match, the opponents sent the team OB.Neon at the bottom of the table, and then was a game with the evil Fnatic... (0:2).

The OB Esports x Neon squad underwent big changes this summer. All the main players moved to BOOM. In the opposite direction, the Asian organization received only Mikoto from the Indonesians, who briefly played for the Neons and moved to Talon Esports after the ninth season of BTS. All in all, the new Neons are something of an experiment that should prove itself by the end of this year, or perhaps even the entire first DPC season. But this is just my guess, and so far, the guys participate in every tournament in a row and do not get much glory.

After TI10, this team was one of the first to play in several parallel Tier-3 tournaments, replacing its carry along the way. The current number one is Filipino Palos, who joined the team from Execration. In addition, before the DPC season, OB.Neon added an Indonesian double, Mamang Daya, who played for Army Geniuses for a long time. A failed BTS also provoked the lads to switch players at the fifth position, the newcomer being Filipino Abeng, who returns to his home turf after two years.

Yes, the playing form of the lads is definitely in order, the tone they maintain every day. The Filipinos finished the group stage of the ninth BTS season a step away from the top net. They lost the fourth line to Nigma due to a failed face-off that opened this group stage of the tournament for them. That defeat was the only one for the squad, but the new neons can't boast much in the way of wins at BTS either. Army Geniuses and Omega Esports won and drew five more times. And it seems that the December games against Chinese teams inspire optimism, but there are few games left in the region, and also not with the weakest opponents.

Considering OB.Neon's December games against Chinese teams plus T1's lack of playing practice, I think the first map will give us Total Over 47.5 frags for 1.53. OB.Neon is proving that they are slowly finding their game, and they will be capable of making around 20 kills against the not so heated T1s.

The second map will be over 32.30 minutes for 1.76, I believe the Filipinos from OB.Neon will put up a minimal fight and not lose a single map in 20 minutes. Around 30+ minutes are all T1 maps this DPC season and OB.Neon is showing that they have their form and are ready to give a fight to anyone.