Team Aster vs LBZS: Favourite to start the new season with a win

The second DPC league of the 2021/22 season in China kicks off on Tuesday, March 15. Team Aster and LBZS will meet in the first match of the day for the elite division.

DPC CN 2021/2022 Tour 2: Division I is an online Dota 2 tournament that will run from March 15 to April 22, 2022. The top eight teams from the China region will compete for $205,000. Aside from the cash prizes, the teams will also fight for four entries to the majors and the crucial DPC points needed to qualify for T11.

Team Aster had a competitive January. The team clawed their way into a second place in DPC League One, and in the replay competition, they overcame the RNG squad. The boys further strengthened the result with a championship at the Intel World Open Beijing, which was not an incredible sensation, but the result was still unexpected.

After the Chinese New Year, the players performed at a relaxed pace. A very poor showing in the DPC regional finals (3rd place out of 4), then not reaching the finals of the OGA Dota PIT Season 6: China (3rd place). All that doesn’t change the main point - Team Aster remains one of the main favourites to start the second round of the 2021/22 season.

Team Aster is one of China’s youngest teams, formed in late 2018 and already top of their region. Last season was a mixed bag for the boys, if you measure their results within the Chinese region, they are very cool: vice-champions of the first DPC league, champions of the second DPC league, champions of two seasons of i-League 2021. Not even PSG.LGD can boast such results in China, but on the international scene Aster played just awful: only 9-12 places in the two majors in Singapore and Kyiv, an unsatisfactory result at TI10 as well - 13-16 place. You can look for excuses, they did not perform in a full squad in Singapore, and at TI10 the entire team suffered from coronavirus, but the fact is that no one makes concessions to the top Chinese team.

Something had to be done, and the bosses of the organization made two substitutions in the squad. For position two, Ori came from Vici Gaming, and for position five, Siamese.C who spent the last season in the Aster.Aries youth team has arrived. And if the first substitution is strengthening, the second is ambiguous, although the five is not the most key position, it’s too bad that the young player was quite good during last season. The games already show that Aster continues to be one of the most formidable Chinese teams even after substitutions. It’s a pity that we can’t see this team in the majors now.

The Suns pleasantly surprised at the end of the first DPC league, not only by keeping their place in the elite but also by winning the starting part of the 2021/22 season that they can beat serious teams. After a month of top-flight Chinese Dota, how will the LBZS squad surprise? They failed twice to beat Team Aster in January, but their successful conclusion to the first league allowed them to keep their roster intact.

LBZS is a young tier-3 team in China, formed back in late 2020. They started last season in the elite of the Chinese DPC league, but failed to win a single match there, and went straight to the second division, where they could earn the right to reappear in the second DPC league in the season 2021 to face the strongest teams in the region.

This team takes part in a lot of tournaments, and successfully at that, but the squad changes frequently. It changed again before the start of the new DPC cycle, with four new players at once: Kagome, Pyue, Molasses and detachment. The only unchanged player is CatYou, who has been with the team for more than a year, or to be more precise, since its formation.

On the first map, there will be Over 47.5 kills; the odds on that are 1.83.

On the first map, you can still take a risk and bet on a handicap (-12.5) kills for Team Aster; the odds on that are 1.76.

The second map will last over 33.5 minutes; the odds on that are 1.79.