picture courtesy of ESL One
The Southeast Asian and Chinese qualifiers for Galaxy Battles commenced today and the front runners are already taking a considerable lead.
Eight teams in each of the regions are fighting for a spot at the $150,000 Galaxy Battles main event. With TnC getting a precious direct invite, the SEA qualifiers looked like should have been a battle between Fnatic and Warriors Gaming Unity. However, with everyone testing their new rosters, Geek Fam prevailed after day one with four victories and zero losses.
Geek Fam locked in their roster two days ago, and with all the teams making big announcements about their shuffles, they went a little bit under the radar despite having a quite surprising addition. Alaan 'SexyBamboe' Faraj made a region swap and will take the road to TI 7 via Southeast Asia. Him joining Geek Fam surely took by surprise a lot of the dota fans as well as many of his ex-teammates. The Galaxy Battles qualifiers mark his first official matches with Geek Fam and so far everything looks great for him and his new team. Undefeated after the first day, Geek Fam leads the group with 12 points, followed by Happy Feet with 9 points.
Surprisingly enough, Fnatic and WG Unity have won only two of their matches and are now tied with the Indian open qualifiers winners, Entity Esports, all with only four points. However, nothing is lost yet for any of these three, as they have four more matches to play on the second day of the qualifiers, which will open with Fnatic taking on WG Unity, match scheduled to commence at 06:00 CEST.
The Chinese qualifiers delivered no surprises as LGD Gaming are uncontested leaders of the group after day one with twelve points. The race is really close though, Vici Gaming, Team MAX and LFY finishing tied up with nine points. LGD and Vici Gaming will open the day two matches and their confrontation can potentially decide the winner of the Chinese qualifiers. At the end of tomorrow’s games we will know who will join the four directly invited teams.
With the main event set to take place at the Shenzhen Bay Sports Stadium in China, June 14-18, right before the TI 7 invites to be announced, Galaxy Battles could be the last ticket to Seattle for all the teams striving to secure the Championship title. So far Newbee, iG Vitality, TnC and Thunderbirds have already confirmed their participation. After the SEA and Chinese qualifiers will determine their winners, it will be Europe’s and America’s turn to enter the race for the one qualifier spot. EU and US qualifiers will commence on the 31st of May. The full list of participants will be announced really soon so stay tuned for the latest updates from Galaxy Battles.
