THE INTERNATIONAL 2018 TEAM INTRODUCTIONS – WINSTRIKE TEAM

Winstrike team, previously known as FlyToMoon, is a CIS team consisting players that ended up without a team in the middle of this season. The team was brought together by Iceberg, their Solo Mid player.

Winstrike’s roster:

1. Silent
2. Iceberg
3. nongrata
4. Nofear
5. ALWAYSWANNAFLY

Created around February 2018, Winstrike made everyone’s heads turn when they beat Virtus.pro at the EPICENTER XL Major who are the favorites to win TI8. They got into the tournament through the “Madness Qualifier” in which any team from any region could participate. A total of 289 teams entered the qualifier and Iceberg’s team came out on top.

They qualified for TI8 through the CIS qualifiers, completely annihilating every team that came against them. They had a 13-3 Win-Loss record.

About the Squad:

Iceberg, the creator of the team, climbed the ladder to become one of the best CIS players, after he played for teams like Vega Squadron and Team Spirit. Getting little to no results with Team Spirit in 2017, Iceberg decided that he did not want to waste time for the rest of the season and ended up creating his own team FlyToMoon which later became Team Winstrike.

Winstrike’s position 3 player, nongrata, started out his Dota 2 career back in 2014 and mostly only played in domestic tournaments. He played for a lot of different teams and started getting traction through his plays on Batrider and Puck.

Nofear’s story is similar to that of nongrata. He has mostly only played in domestic tournaments. Nofear is infamous for having played for over 15 teams in his Dota career, giving him a tremendous amount of experience. He is currently the captain of Winstrike.

ALWAYSWANNAFLY is a legendary Ukranian player and is one of the oldest players in the Dota 2 scene. He has captained several teams in his career and he is known to be a very stable Position 5 player.

Silent’s Story:

Winstrike’s Carry player Silent is one of the most experienced players in the CIS region. He started out his Dota 2 career in early 2012 and is mostly known for playing in Team Empire. In early 2016, Silent had to step away from Dota for almost one and a half year due to health issues. When he returned, Team Empire welcomed him back into the team. This didn’t last long as Empire’s roster deemed Silent to be too rusty and kicked him from the team in early 2018. Silent proved them wrong as he got picked up by Iceberg for FlyToMoon and made it to TI8, beating Team Empire in the CIS qualifiers.

Winstrike has only played EPICENTER XL among all the DPC tournaments this season and they looked quite strong. Since they played so little, people consider them as the dark horses for TI8. Will Winstrike be able to take on the favorites like Virtus.pro and PSG.LGD? I for one have a feeling that they will cause a lot of upsets at TI8.