We are more than four weeks into the European groupstage of StarLadder X, and Team Tinker is still in the lead. They are followed by NaVi, Cloud9 and Secret Team, with Empire and Alliance being close to snatching a spot in the top four and Kiev's LAN finals.
While both China and America have reached their respective regional playoffs, the Starladder X groupstages of both Europe and SEA are still ongoing. The SEA matches are scheduled to conclude this week, but the European challengers still have a long road ahead of them if they wish to reach the LAN finals in Cyberarena, Kiev. Nevertheless, many teams are getting close to completing their list of 15 best-of-ones and the final standings are starting to form.
The first place of the leaderboard belongs to Team Tinker, with an impressive 10-2 record and only three games remaining. As it currently stands, it is rather difficult for the newly formed squad to stay out of the LAN playoffs. Behind Team Tinker stand Natus Vincere and Cloud9, with 8-4 and 8-5 gamescores respectively. While the two teams seem to be in a rather dominant position, they have yet to face the fourth challenger of the rankings, Secret Team. Puppey's boys have dropped only one game against Alliance, and they even seem to have the strength to reclaim the first place.
It should be noted that the distance between Secret Team and the following squads is rather minor. For example, only one victory stands between Empire and a top-four spot. The 7-1 record of Secret Team gives them enough time and space to secure their trip to Kiev, but both Natus Vincere and Cloud9 must feel threatened - a small number of upsets can strip them off their ticket to Ukraine. Since Fnatic is also entering the race after a small period of inactivity, it should be interesting to see how the rankings change in the following week.
The matches continue tomorrow at 17:00 CEST with the Russian derby between Virtus.Pro and Empire. The battles between NaVi-Fnatic and Secret Team-Cloud9 should be quite interesting, and they will bring significant changes on the current standings - a victory for Secret Team will help them claim the second place and get closer to Team Tinker. You can find the full schedule of StarSeries X on our coverage hub here.
Headline image by thisisgame.com
