Icelandic esports organisation Dusty have won the Northern League of Legends Championship NLC Aurora Open.
They defeated Astralis Talent 3-0 in the grand final of the pro-am tournament yesterday, which saw teams from multiple divisions in the UK/Ireland/Nordics LoL scene take part.
It was a dominant display from Dusty, whose team consists of Kerberos (top), Lyncas (jungle), Backlund (mid), DenVoksne (bot lane) and Stend (support). They won 23-10, 26-13 and 23-18 in three straight games as part of the best-of-five series.
Broadcast talent Archarom, Hiprain and Jamada were a part of the stream as Dusty cemented their status as the best team in the NLC, with Nymaera, Initialise and TroubleInc on board as casters.
The news comes after Dusty won the NLC Summer 2022 season, having finished top of the standings in the regular split and winning the playoffs too. They also reached the quarter finals of the summer 2022 EU Masters.
Earlier in the spring 2022 NLC season, Bifrost topped the table and X7 won the playoffs.
Dusty bot laner DenVoksne said on the NLC Twitch broadcast after the win:
“It’s nice, because even though not everyone showed up with their full line-up in the Aurora Cup, we showed that we’re still the best. Don’t worry, because Dusty is still on top.”
DenVoksne, Dusty
“I’m very happy. I think we could’ve done more in the EU Masters and am frustrated with how it ended [for us in that tournament], I think we could’ve gone further. I think we all learned a lot as players and probably worked harder than most other teams to get where we were. I don’t think many predicted we’d win, but we kept working at it.”
Looking towards 2023, the NLC ecosystem is currently up in air, with several teams leaving the NLC and various organisations looking to get a slot in Division 1, plus rumours flying around to do with the organising of the tournament.
This Friday (November 18th 2022), Riot Games plans to make an announcement around the future of its European Regional Leagues (ERLs), and Esports News UK will of course report on this.
Dusty also published a vlog from the finals here.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
