For those who might have missed the most important news from the past week in the competitive Dota2 scene, here is a short recap.
Tournament news
Spring Major to be held in Kiev, Ukraine
The second and last Major ahead of the International 7 will be held from April 20 to 23rd in Kiev, Ukraine. The race for the Kiev Major will start in the first week of March 2017 with the open qualifiers followed on March 10-13 by regional qualifiers. With the Spring 2017 Major, Valve will divide for the first time the American qualifiers into two separate regions, North and South, while the European qualifiers will feature a dedicated CIS competition.
ESL One Genting 2017: Groups are drawn
Eight teams, from which five are Boston Major attendees, are going to fight in the first weekend of January 2017 at ESL One Genting. ESL One Genting is not only the first premiere event of 2017 but it is also the first major event to be played on the new 7.00 patch.
Group A:
Group B:
StarLadder i-League Star Series Season 3 announced
The joint StarLadder and Imba TV event has reached its third season and will have the same $300,000 prize pool as previous two editions, and a total of eight participating teams fighting for it.
StarLadder i-League Star Series Season 3 LAN finals will be held on February 23-26 in Shanghai China, at the International Gymnastics Center, a venue that can accommodate up to 4,000 spectators.
The organizers reserved only two direct invites spots, the other six teams having to qualify for the event.
LAN Finals slots distribution:
Direct invites: 2 teams
China: 2 qualified teams
Europe: 2 qualified teams
America: 1 qualified team
South East Asia: 1 qualified team
IG Vitality crowned Champions of WCA 2016
Once they reached the bo5 grand finals, Vici Gaming faced IG Vitality, who recently returned from Boston Major. Vitality were able to play with their full roster on this occasion, unlike in Boston, where they had to bring two stand-ins to fill the gap created by the visa issues. Just returned home, without any time to properly practice on the new patch, IG Vitality displayed impressive tenacity in the grand finals where they were pushed in a decisive game five.
WCA 2016 final standings:
1st: 
IG Vitality - ¥ 2,400,000 (~ $347,569)
2nd: Vici Gaming - ¥ 1,000,000 (~ $144,820)
3rd: We Are Young - ¥ 500,000 (~ $72,410)
4th: 
Prodota Gaming - ¥ 200,000 (~ $28,964)
WellPlay Invitational returns with a new format
The sixth edition of WellPlay Invitational will kicked off on the 17th of December, this time around with Vitalbet as tournament’s main partners. Changing the format from a double elimination bracket to a single elimination one, and boosting the prize pool from $3,000, to $5,000, this edition of WellPlay feature the likes of Team Liquid, Alliance, Team Empire and many more.
Team shuffles
In an interview with Red Bull Esports from yesterday, TNC announced Timothy 'Tims' Randrup to round out the roster. Tims is one of the promising youngsters from the SEA scene. He began playing only at the beginning of this year, his first big team being Execration with which he went to TI6 to play in the Wildcards. In the post TI6 shuffle he moved to Rave and now, nearly three months later, he got recruited by TNC.
TNC roster:
Marc Polo 'Raven' Luis Fausto
Carlo 'Kuku' Palad
Sam 'SamH' Hida
Ryo 'Ryoyr' Hasegawa
Timothy 'Tims' Randrup
Fng, Iceberg, DkPhobos, Vanskor, and Bzz to make Team Spirit great again
Without signing any players in the post TI6 Shuffle, Team Spirit announced back in September that the CIS organization will make a return to Dota 2 when the time feels right. The recent roster changes from Vega Squadron, Virtus Pro and Fantastic Five left a handful of well-known CIS players teamless, moment when Team Spirit found the perfect window to assemble a whole new roster.
Team Spirit roster from position 1 to 5:
Stanislav 'Bzz' Glushan
Bogdan 'Iceberg' Vasilenko
Alexander 'DkPhobos' Kucheria
Artsiom 'fng' Barshack
Ivan 'VANSKOR' Skorokhod
