This Tuesday, 13 November, StarLadder returns for its fourth season. The online part with 16 teams and 120 matches will last until 11 December. Christmas will be early this year, as the LAN finals will be held from 20 to 23 December.
Significant changes have been made to the prizepool distribution this time around. While the pool remains at $15,000, now only the top four will be awarded with money. At the same time it's just four teams being invited to the LAN final with double elimination brackets. All games in the Cybersports Arena in Kiev will be best-of-threes, except for the final which is best-of-five.
Prize Pool:
1. $8,000
2. $4,000
3. $2,000
4. $1,000
As already reported earlier, SLTV will host preliminary qualifiers to fill the gap left by EG and Quantic, who both lost their slot as they didn't attend the LAN finals. A best-of-one double elimination tournament will determine the two teams to replace them. Participating teams are iCCup, No Tidehunter, mTw, We Haz Asian, Kaipi and possibly Shiba Gaming and Moscow Five, who have yet to be confirmed, as well as another team.
The two qualifier promotion teams are not the only new teams to be added to the StarSeries. The four top teams from last season's ProSeries are eligible to play in the last season of the year as well. evo, eL'Pride, Gamer University and FUBAR advance to the StarSeries.
On top of that, former Eclypsia and former Moscow Five squad will not be participating, but 3 core members of each team have formed a new team and are eligible to play as well, namely XX5 (former M5) and iLuminate (former Eclypsia).
| Teams participating | |
 Natus Vincere Zero Absolute Legends Team Empire Virtus.Pro evo eL'Pride Gamer University | FUBAR Pulse eSports MeetYourMakers iLuminate XX5 FnaticRC Qualified Team 1 Qualified Team 2 |
New Teams & Rosters
iLuminate: Vitaliy 'Nexius' Boshko (C) Andrey 'Mag~' Chipenko Vitaliy 'Dubas' Luhtan Andrey 'ALWAYSWANNAFLY' Bondarenko Vadim 'BlooDAnGeL' Trushkin XX5: Igor 'Nexus' Lisakovsky (C) Ilya 'Stalianer' Drugov Vadim 'Sedoy' Musorin Khaled 'sQreen' El-Khabbash
Kirill 'Sun|1ight' Kachinsky Gamer University: Per 'Hyac' Schmidt (C) Theis 'Vuuv' Lauesen Mikki 'Hestejoe-Rotten' Junget Mathias 'HawaiiOo' Lysgaard Danny 'DJ.Noia' Junget eL'Pride: Alexander 'Stalk' Melder (C) Igor 'Tony Montana' Popov Leonard 'Massacre' Urih Andrew 'androidP' Pishchikov Eugen 'XaKoH' Kochetkov FUBAR: Felix 'chewy' Ehrlund (C) Björn 'QuiX-' Granström Johannes 'Jojje' Mogren Alex 'Etakaka' Lindström Tom 'Zapcrash' Halvarsson eVo: Tobi 'GoAudio' Strand (C) Gustav 'BlueberryNinja' Arnstedt Marcus 'Werne' Werneskog Björn '13-_-' L Marius 'BLABLAFU' BrötzOnce again, TobiWan will provide English commentary, whereas v1lat, mtrx4u and Casper will provide Russian commentary for StarLadder StarSeries.
Source: StarLadder