The fourth and last direct invite of NESO for the $150,000 Galaxy Battles LAN event went to the NA representative, Thunderbirds.
The five Thunderbirds players have renamed themselves only recently, days before the Kiev Major was set to start, when they announced their departure from Digital Chaos. Despite finishing second at The International 6, DC struggled to keep at the top of their form. Even so, they were granted a direct invite to the Boston Major where they finished top four. 2017 began with a great achievement for DC, who won their first tournament, namely the ESL One Genting, back in January. Their performance in Kiev was far from matching the Boston Major one and strange enough, with the rosters lock deadline ending on the 24th of May at 00:00 PST, neither Thunderbirds nor any of their players are to be found on the Majors registration list.
Thunderbirds roster from Kiev Major:
Aliwi ‘w33’ Omar
Roman ’Resolut1on’ Fominok
David ‘Moon’ Tan
Martin ‘Saksa’ Sazdov
Rasmus ‘MiSeRy’ Filipsen
Errors happened before, and this might be yet another one when a team could not register on Valve’s list. However, with no official announcements coming out yet from the team or Valve, one thing is sure. Thunderbirds will make trip to Shenzhen China this June to compete at Galaxy Battles, where they can potentially secure a TI7 direct invite.
Thunderbirds are joining Newbee, iG Vitality, and TnC from the direct invites seats and will meet in the main event four other qualified teams.
Galaxy Battles participating teams:
Newbee (direct invite)
iG Vitality (direct invite)
TnC (direct invite)
Thunderbirds (direct invite)
TBD - SEA qualifiers winners
TBD - European qualifiers winners
TBD - Americas qualifiers winners
TBD - Chinese qualifiers winners
Three open qualifiers have already concluded last night, with Nasty Potatoes winning the Southeast Asian bracket, Entity Gaming emerging victorious in the Indian competition and Rock/Rush B claiming the first spot in the Chinese open qualifiers.
By winning the Indian open qualifiers, Entity Gaming will be placed in the SEA regional closed qualifiers along with Nasty Potatoes and six other invited teams. Galaxy Battles Chinese and SEA regional qualifiers will be held across two days, May 25th and 26th while European and American regions will dispute their slots at the end of the month, on the 31st. The organizers also announced a slight change in the regional qualifiers format, the games being cut down from best-of-two to a best-of-one round robin.
