From Pokémon to The International, Dota 2

One month later, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

The Soul Stone team's training base is a rented detached house located on the banks of a quiet canal outside Amsterdam. From the second-floor windows, you can see the boats slowly passing by on the canal and rows of neat gabled houses on both sides.

They had just finished a practice match against Team Liquid, where they were defeated 2-0. However, the players were not discouraged and were actively reviewing the game.

The main reason is that the scrimmages with Team Liquid are too precious. In the past month, Su Xiaoman has arranged scrimmages with almost all the top and second-tier European teams. He has basically played against all the second-tier teams. However, several strong teams are unwilling to play against them. This is unavoidable, since everyone wants to play scrimmages with strong teams. In recent years, teams in the CN region have been labeled as "weak teams".

Among the strong teams, only Liquid and Sprite, which have always had good relations with CN, were willing to accept scrims, but they didn't have many available slots. Today, we finally got to play against Liquid, and everyone was very excited.

[Liquid's fast-paced offense is really aggressive. We made a few small mistakes in the laning phase and they capitalized on them. In the mid-game, they fought us relentlessly. They also like to pick mobile champions and don't seem to consider team fights in the mid-to-late game, focusing instead on snowballing to victory in the early to mid-game.]

Gu Ran summarized his views on Team Liquid.

Indeed, they have consistently maintained their top-six positions in major competitions this year thanks to this playing style.

Their main strategy is to constantly help Nisha get mid, and then Nisha gets fed and leads two support heroes to roam around and attack our experience shrines and resource points like the triangle area. Even if we suppress Nisha, they have a second engine - Mickey (m1CKe), whose strategy also favors early and mid-game engagements.

In their team, only the offlaner ACE likes to farm, ensuring at least one person on the team is farming. Also, if he gets a hero like Underlord, he can easily provide global support.

Su Xiaoman continued to summarize. She had been researching these strong teams since the Immortal Cup era, and she spoke eloquently about it.

Then the other four brothers summarized their shortcomings in handling the laning phase and team fights, and everyone felt they had learned a lot.

Alright, that's about it for the summary, right? I have some good news to share today: the Xue Ruyi Invitational Tournament has officially invited us to participate. We'll be heading back to Wudu in mid-August to compete. According to inside information, we Chinese teams have invited four teams for this tournament, while the other twelve are all foreign teams, including several top-tier teams. It's a great opportunity for us to hone our skills!

【Awesome!】*5

After a month of training, everyone was getting a little bored. When they heard there was a competition, they were all eager to try it out. And it was an offline competition held in their own backyard, which was very exciting.

A week later, Xue Ruyi's official roster was also announced. A total of sixteen teams participated in the competition. The group stage was divided into four groups, with each group playing a BO2 single round-robin format. The first-place team in each group directly advanced to the knockout stage, while the second-place team in one group played a qualifying match against the third-place team in another group, with the winner advancing to the knockout stage.

The knockout stage consists of eight teams, playing a best-of-three (BO3) single-elimination format until the grand final, which is then changed to a best-of-five (BO5) format.

The news sparked active discussions across various DOTA2 communities, and many content creators on Bilibili released preview videos. Domestic viewers hadn't had a match to watch in a long time, and Lin Yiming immediately clicked on the preview video to watch it as soon as it was released.

Enjoy DOTA to your heart's content, and check out the Radiance Plan now and then!

[Welcome to this year's Snow Ruyi Hyperdimensional World competition preview. This competition has invited sixteen teams, divided into four groups.]

Group B includes Brothers, who narrowly lost to HG in the qualifiers; Falcons, a strong team from Western Europe; PV; and Play Time, the second-ranked team from Southeast Asia.

Group C includes familiar teams like Refuser, Liquid (a strong team from Western Europe), Tundra, and Mouz.

Group D includes HG, who just barely secured a spot in TI; Sprite, a strong team from Eastern Europe; the Yellow Submarine; and GL, the top team from North America.

[I think this grouping is basically very balanced in terms of skill level, and the four CN teams are also conveniently placed in four different groups. Some viewers feel lucky with this grouping, as they might see all four CN teams advance to the knockout stage. Of course, more rational viewers probably don't have such fantasies, so some people think it would be better if several CN teams were in the same group, at least guaranteeing one spot.]

[Next, I'll briefly introduce the foreign teams in Group A, who are the opponents our Soul Stone team will be facing. We already discussed OG in the last video, so I won't repeat it here. First, let's introduce VP.]

VP is a veteran team, and their roster this year includes several familiar faces, such as the legendary position 5 player Fly. He was the first player in the world to reach 3000 professional matches, and like Puppy, he holds the record for most TI appearances, having participated in 11 TI tournaments. He led EG to a third-place finish at TI8.

Abed, also known as "Bed God," was the first player to reach 1 MMR in ranked play. However, he didn't have any particularly outstanding performances in professional matches. His best result was probably a 9th-12th place finish with the DC team at TI7.

Their offlaner, Saberlight, had won numerous Tier 1 championships with Team Liquid, but at that year's TI, Liquid, as the defending champions, only managed a 9th-12th place finish. After that, he left Liquid and later joined VP.

On paper, this team isn't weak, but in reality, they lost to both PV and L1ga in the TI qualifiers this year, failing to qualify for TI. I wonder if they're hiding some amazing tactics to show off at Xue Ruyi. (＾艸＾)】

NAVI is the TI1 champion team. This long-established club has been competing until this year, and has also experienced several disbandments and reorganizations.

目前他们的阵容是一批非常年轻的小将。明星选手应该是他们的中单 niku，他是第一个达到天梯分 17000分的选手。而后也曾经在欧服登顶过。他的TI最好成绩是在2025年的TI上曾经夺得过9～12名的好成绩，并且在那一年的石油杯上也拿到了9～12名。

Similar to VP, they also faltered in the TI qualifiers, losing to both Sprite and Yellow Submarine, thus missing out on this year's TI. However, like VP, they lost in the final match, meaning they were practically guaranteed a spot in TI. Given the fierce competition in the European region, we must not underestimate their strength.

[After introducing the opponents in Group A, let's move on to Group D, where our HG team will face. Sprite needs no introduction; they're two-time TI champions, and their roster this year is very strong. Yellow Submarine is a team that just qualified for TI through the TI qualifiers. GL is the top team in North America, but their strength is average.]

In Group B, Brothers faces opponents including Falcons, PV, and GL. Falcons and PV are strong Western European teams, while Playtime is a South American team that narrowly missed TI after losing to LGD in the TI qualifiers. Honestly, this group is a bit scary. Brothers seems to have been placed in this group as the easy target. Everyone should lower their expectations; a win would be a surprise, a loss would be expected.

[Refuser in Group C will face Liquid, Tundra, and Mouz. They're basically here to experience the strength of top teams, so don't have too high expectations.]

Looking at the group stage as a whole, I feel that Team Zhenhunshi has a very good chance. As the seeded team in the group, I am very optimistic that they can take first place. Winning first place in the group stage is crucial, as it means they can directly enter the knockout stage and skip a round of qualifying matches. As for the other three teams, I feel that making it to the qualifying stage would be a victory for them, and their chances of making it to the knockout stage are slim.