The festive season is much merrier this year with the Moon Studio Campfire in action. Featuring ten Southeast Asia and China teams in a classic tournament format, we have enough games to last us through Christmas and New Year.
Moon Studio Campfire Tournament – Format and Teams
The Moon Studio Campfire features a full-fledged format, consisting of a group stage and playoffs. All ten teams participate in the group stage, which is great to give us a glimpse of the power rankings at Moon Studio Campfire.
The group stage has single round-robin best-of-two matches, where the top four teams advanced to upper bracket while the fifth-eighth place teams still proceed to the lower bracket of the Playoffs. The bottom two seeds will end their tournament life with elimination. Having eight surviving teams compete in the Playoffs makes for better matches because they play best-of-three series in double-elimination bracket.
The SEA teams include Lilgun, Neon Esports, Atlantis, XERXIA, KOBOLDS, and Yangon Galacticos. Meanwhile, Dawn Gaming, LBZS, Meteor Gaming, and iG.Vitalty are the China representatives.
Lilgun is arguably the most accomplished in this tournament, notably for being a household name last season. Securing top two in the last Division 2 bracket promoted the Mongolian squad into the big league’s Division 1 bracket. What’s interesting is that Lilgun still has their two-year-old roster up and running, which is a testament to Lilgun’s perseverance.
Yangon Galacticos formerly had their moments in DPC, but eventually fall off. Nevertheless, YG still kept their old roster around, despite the poor showcase. Two Chinese teams are staples in the DPC, such as LBZS and iG.Vitality. While the two teams aren’t high-profile Chinese powerhouses, LBZS has its moments, especially during its initial debut.
Week 1 Recap at Moon Studio Campfire
The first days of the event showcased an impressive performance from XERXIA, which overwhelmed China and inter-region opponents alike. We can credit XERXIA’s success on their split-push tactics, which besides being a late-game assurance, is also a strong snowballing tactic if the game goes well.
Despite the great impression on Chinese teams, LBZS struggles to snatch a single clean series from not only the Chinese rival but SEA opponents too. That said, it is unlikely that LBZS would be leaving Moon Studio Campfire through the group stage elimination since their matches are even. Additionally, LBZS might just be treating the group stage games as a playing field to test out new strategies as we see very versatile drafts in every match.
Although it has been a week since the Moon Studio Campfire kicked off, there aren’t many matches per day yet. As such, the fan favorite, Lilgun, has not debuted their first match nor do we have any insight on Yangon Galacticos or Meteor Gaming’s potential. Nevertheless, expect more action over the coming days of Christmas and we might just catch a glimpse of strong teams in the making at the upcoming DPC 2023.
From what we’ve gathered thus far, plenty of matches end up in a draw. The Dota 2 odds are roughly x1.91 over at GG.BET for all draw markets, so testing some systems is not a bad idea.
