The European division group stages of the fourth season of D2CL begin today with old rivals Na'Vi and Alliance going up against each other, followed by TeamTinker taking on Empire. For the first time D2CL will feature multiple regions, with American and Chinese regional qualifiers to follow.
The Dota 2 Champions League commences today with the European division going live. This group stage of the tournament will involve Best-of-2's in a round-robin format for each region, leading upto the next stage i.e. online elimination. Ultimately, four teams will find themselves at Dreamhack Masters Bucharest 2014, where the LAN playoffs will be held. Following the recent trends of globalizing tournaments, this season will involve teams from America as well as China.
In the first match of the day 2nd season champions Na'Vi will face 1st season champions Alliance. With an old rivalry to maintain and new rosters on display, this will certainly be an interesting match-up. Na'Vi, after replacing Puppey and Kuroky with Fng and Vanskor, have been in excellent form, face rolling most European teams with a 7-1 win-loss score at StarLadder X, their only loss coming against Cloud9 recently. Alliance has had a mixed run ever since they started using Chessie and MiSeRy as stand-ins for EGM and s4. At SL-X they found comfortable wins against Cloud9 and Secret Team but lost to none other than Na'Vi.
Later in the day, season 3 champions Empire takes on the newly formed Team Tinker. Both teams have settled with their new rosters and have been performing consistently. The two teams faced off recently in MSI Beat It - Europe Main Event and also in Battle Arena. While Empire took the first engagement to their name, Team Tinker dominated the latter.
The American group stage also begins in a couple of days, with six teams registered. One can find the details regarding teams involved and scheduling on this page. The Chinese teams and schedule are expected to be announced soon. D2CL has a starting prize pool of $50,000 and fans can contribute to the fund by purchasing the in-game tickets recently released on the Dota Store. $2.50 of each purchase goes directly into the prize pool.
Check our match pages to find streams for the matches once they go live.
Source: d2cl.org
