After a year of hosting RES Regional Series tournaments in three major regions, Relog Media officially closed out its tournament series with a LAN event in Belgrade, Serbia this week.

Although the focus of the Dota 2 world is currently on the $1 million BetBoom Dacha tournament also taking place in Belgrade, Serbia, Relog Media is still proud to crown the champion of the RES tournament in the same city.

RES - bridge between tier 2 and tier 1

This year, four RES Regional Series seasons took place from February to September, where lower tier teams were divided into three major regions. Teams in Eastern and Western Europe participate in RES Series EU, North and South American teams compete in RES Series LATAM, and Southeast Asian teams have their own tournaments. Each season of the RES Regional Series has a total prize pool of 50,000 USD and RES points.

RES has created a system similar to the ESL Pro Tour but on a smaller scale and focused on developing tier 2 and tier 3 teams. With a total prize pool of 1,180,000 USD across all seasons, the final top 2 teams from each region EU, LATAM and SEA and two guest teams participated in the LAN RES Regional Champions tournament with a prize worth 200,000 USD.

From Team Tea to AVULUS - Journey to become RES Regional Champions

RES has become a playground for many players to encounter tier 1 this year. Dandelions started their first RES season this year and now competes under the Alliance name in tier 1 tournaments, MOUZ and NAVI Junior are also present here. Along with that, Yellow Submarine with Alan "Satanic" Gallyamov and Aleksandr "rue" Filin - now both joining Team Spirit - have also been part of RES since the early days. L1ga Team entered their second RES season and currently compete at BetBoom Dacha Belgrade, while RES EU Series #3 saw Team Tea crowned champions.

Soon after, Team Tea changed its name to AVULUS and added Daniel "Stormstormer" Schoetzau in the mid position. They debuted at the $1 million PGL Wallachia Season 2 in Bucharest, Romania earlier this month and placed 6th, taking home $40,000.

While many of their opponents at PGL headed straight to BetBoom Dacha, AVULUS chose to compete at the RES Regional Champions LAN also taking place in Serbia.

Team OG and the newly formed team PARIVISION - a roster made up mainly of former Cloud9 teams - were the two guests at RES Regional Champions. Both teams considered this $200,000 tournament as a test step for their new lineup, but in the end they were unable to win the championship.

AVULUS led its group going into the playoffs. From there, they only need to overcome two bo3 series to win the throne. AVULUS defeated Alliance 2-1 in the semi-finals and then swept PARIVISION in the final, taking home its first championship trophy and $100,000.

The next step forward for AVULUS

There is no respite for AVULUS. On Sunday, October 27, 2024, they will begin their journey at DreamLeague Season 24. A total of 16 teams will compete for a prize pool of $1 million USD and 14,600 EPT points.

AVULUS will compete in Group A and their first opponent in the round-robin group stage will again be PARIVISION - the team they just defeated in the RES Regional Champions final.