Captains Draft 4.0 Minor is a joint venture by the DotaCinema and Moonduck studios.
Scheduled to take place during the first week of January 2018, the tournament’s fourth edition marks the first ever LAN organized by the two studios, and brings back a casting duo that some of you might remember from 2014: Troels 'syndereN' Nielsen and Shannon 'SUNSfan' Scotten. The Captains Draft tournament's story begins in February 2014, when DotaCinema hosted the first edition; it was the European team of Fnatic (N0tail, Fly, Era, Trixi, and H4nn1) who took first place back then and after that, the tournament continued to be that annual event everyone waited for because of its different game mode chosen.
Nearly four years later, Captains Draft 4.0 is a Minor, and is the only tournament from the Dota Pro Circuit played in a different format than the Captains Mode. The tournament will unfold from January 4-7 at the DC Armory in Washington, with $300,000 on the line and 300 Dota Pro Circuit points up for grabs. Captains Draft 4.0 will mark, in fact, a couple of “firsts”; it will be the first tournament of 2018, the first tournament for the revamped Evil Geniuses and Team Empire rosters, the first LAN event and the first Valve sponsored tournament for the Brazilian organization paiN Gaming, but the most exciting part is that it will be the first ever LAN organized by DotaCinema and Moonduck.
As expected, the broadcast team is a mix of personalities from the two studios but it also features Beyond the Summit’s commentator and translator, and most recently VGJ Storm’s manager, Jack 'KBBQ' Chen and Kevin 'Purge' Godec.
Captains Draft 4.0 will feature eight teams. Two directly invited and six qualified will enter the battle split into two groups of four. The group stage is not eliminatory, but will determine the seeding for the single elimination playoffs bracket. The groups will go by Group Hippo and Group Horse names but the teams split in these two have not been announced just yet. The full list of participants at the Captains Draft 4.0 Minor is as follows:
Evil Geniuses (direct invite)
Team Secret (direct invite)
compLexity Gaming (NA qualifiers winners)
paiN Gaming (SA qualifiers winners under the Midas Club Elite tag)
Team Empire (CIS qualifiers winners)
Vici Gaming (Chinese qualifiers winners)
Mineski (SEA qualifiers winners)
OG (EU qualifiers winners)
