Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek, videogame streamer and former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player, recently said that Fallout 76’s new battle royale mode Nuclear Winter was his “new main game”. However, it looks like a new game is on his radar, which it seems he’s taking to pretty well – Shroud has won the first game of Valve’s Dota Underlords he’s ever played.
As spotted by Dot Esports, Shroud streamed what was apparently his first ever Dota Underlords match live on Twitch, and in winning impressively shot up from bottom to first place. As the site explains, the secret to his success was in his choice of build – he blended Mages’ mega magical damage with other disruptive elements, allowing him to smash through his opponent before letting his high damage dealers then take over to finish them off.
In the end, Shroud won a not-too-shabby 28 of 42 rounds in his first Dota Underlords match. Considering that the player count for the new game is high, with many no doubt hungry for some wins, it looks like Shroud’s probably entitled to a pat on the back for his efforts.
Shroud is a player who has so far based his streaming career around gunplay-focussed battle royales and shooters like Apex Legends and PUBG, so his venture into the emerging autobattlers genre is perhaps a little surprising. On the other hand, though, perhaps not.
With the release of Teamfight Tactics and Dota Underlords, the autobattler genre is quickly rising in popularity – and becoming home to something of an arms race. Developers like Valve, Drodo Studios, and Riot Games have all thrown their hats into the ring with their own autobattler titles.
Ready for battle? Check out our Dota Underlords guide
Whether Shroud or fellow Twitch streamers like him will start to make autobattlers a bigger part of their content, we’ll just have to wait and see. With a start like this, maybe he’ll be tempted.