Dota 2 The International Qualifiers: Soniqs Conquers North America

By Jason Nieva @jnievaplayerone Published 09/13/22 EDT

There was never any doubt. Twitter/@SoniqsEsports

Another region has finished its Qualifier for The International 2022. North America has long been dominated by a few Dota 2 teams. Two of them, Evil Geniuses and TSM, managed to secure a direct invite to TI.

The expectation then was that it would be a fight between Soniqs (formerly Quincy Crew) and Nouns (formerly 4 Zoomers). That was in fact what happened and it was Soniqs that came out on top.

Road to Qualifier

For the recently concluded 2021-2022 DPC, Soniqs got first place in Tour 1. While they weren’t able to top again, their finishes could still be described as good. The team ended Tour 2 in third place and Tour 3 in second place.

Meanwhile, Nouns had a fourth-place finish during Tour 1 and fifth place in Tour 2. They improved their performance in Tour 3 with a third-place finish.

The Initial Matches

Both Soniqs and Nouns handily defeated their respective opponents before facing off in the Upper Bracket Final. It was Nouns that would win against Soniqs 2-0. That meant Soniqs was relegated to the Lower Bracket. But it didn’t matter much since Soniqs managed to sweep Wildcard Gaming for a second face-off with Nouns.

The Grand Final

The best way to describe the Grand Final was that it was pretty much all about Quinn “Quinn” Callahan.

In the first game, he managed to get eight kills with 12 assists and only two deaths. Not that surprising considering that he was on Batrider. The second game was the same story with Quinn again on Batrider. The only difference was that he went for a different build for the second game. It helped that Yawar "YawaR" Hassan on Phantom Assassin had 23 kills and only one death.

For the third game, Nouns finally made the decision to ban Batrider. That didn't change things much with Soniqs letting Quinn use Lina. You knew that it would be the end for Nouns with Quinn being able to get a Black King Bar at the 16-minute mark. He ended the game with 14 kills and one death. How impressive was that? The total team kills for Nouns was 12.