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:
Galaxy Battles EU and NA qualifier details released
Galaxy Battles EU and NA regional closed qualifiers will take place on the 31st of May with eight teams fighting in a best-of-one Round Robin group stage. Seven squads received invites to the closed stage of the competition while one more will join them from open brackets. The EU and NA competitors for the one spot available in each region to the $150,000 LAN event are as follows:
Europe:
Americas:
Zotac Cup Masters; iG.Vitality replace iG, DC last invite, schedule, format released
ZOTAC Cup Masters is about to get in full swing tomorrow, May 30th. The event seemed to be heading into a rocky start, only days ago with some team attendance issues that have since been sorted out. Team Freedom was forced to withdraw their participation from the event due to visa issues that grounded Yawar 'YawaR' Hassan. Their place was granted to the new iteration of Digital Chaos, who recently placed 9-16th at the Kiev Major. Due to the tight schedule facing Invictus Gaming,with a busy LAN season ahead iG.Vitality will be stepping into their place and aiming to bring home the trophy for their organization anyway.
ZOTAC Cup Masters format:
Main Event
- Group Stage
- Two groups of four teams
- Double-elimination (GSL) format.
- Top two from each group advance to Playoffs.
- Playoffs
- Six teams play in a single-elimination bracket
- Playoffs are Bo3, finals is in Bo5.
Group A
Group B
EPICENTER 2017 groups revealed; Group A stacked with EU talent
The EPICENTER 2017 groups have been revealed with just over a week to go before the event kicks off with the group stage on June 4th. Ten teams have been separated into two groups of five to engage in a brutal and deadly group stage to kick off EPICENTER 2017. Only three teams from each group (six total) will emerge from the battle to advance to the main event playoff stage. Four teams will never step foot on the main stage and end their journey behind closed doors.
NP receive one year ban from DreamLeague
With the seventh edition, DreamLeague announced a separate NA division for the LeaguePlay and according to the tournament organizers, they have discussed with NP back in February about their participation. Despite accepting the invitation back in February, NP announced that they have decided to withdraw yet again from the tournament to honor the Zotac Cup invitation. The DreamLeague NA division is set to commence on the 30th of May and Zotac Cup starts on the exact same day. With NP flying to Taipei to play in the $100,000 LAN event, DreamLeague decided to issue a one year ban to the NP organization and invited the Kiev Major South American sensation, SG e-sports to replace them.
Team announcements:
Mineski add another CIS component in the TI 7 roster shuffle
Just five days after Mag had made his grand arrival, Mineski lost in the finals of two qualifiers on the 15th of May: 2-1 against WG.Unity in the Zotac Cup Masters SEA Qualifier #2 and 3-0 against Clutch Gamers in the MDL 2017 SEA Qualifier, in which they famously let slip a 40k networth lead in the second game.
Following the catastrophic turn of events, it seems the organization decided to make a few more changes to bolster the team. They bid farewell to Adam ‘343’ Shah and brought in one more CIS player to join Mag in Philippines, Egor ‘Ark’ Zhabotinskii, who was playing position one for the Russian team Commanche till April 2017.
Mineski roster:
Egor '.Ark' Zhabotinskii
Chai Yee 'Mushi' Fung [C]
Andrey 'MAg--' Chipenko
Ryo 'ryOyr' Hasegawa
Mike 'ninjaboogie' Ross Jr.
EHOME picks up y`, Faith_bian, re-signs Garder for TI7 season
EHOME has officially picked up ex Wings players, Zhang "Faith_bian" Ruida and Zhang "y`" Yiping amidst ACE controversy and also welcomes back Liu "Garder" Xinzhou. The new faces to EHOME will be replacing Hu "Sen" Sen and Jiang "jdh"' Donghao who seem to be benched and listed as substitute players with the organization. In addition, EHOME welcomes back Garder to the ranks, who had been inactive with the organization since January 2017, as Zhang "LaNm" Zhicheng heads to ViCi Gaming in a coaching role.
EHOME roster:
Chen 'Cty' Tianyu
Wang 'old chicken' Zhiyong
Zhang 'Faith_bian' Ruida
Zhang 'y`' Yiping
Liu 'Garder' Xinzhou
With Eric “747” Dong and Jaron “Monkeys-Forever” Clinton parting ways with compLexity Gaming around one month ago, the team have confirmed their new roster which sees Jimmy “DeMoN” Ho and Feras “Feero” Hroob join the squad.
compLexity Gaming roster:
Kyle “swindlemelonzz” Freedman
Zakari “Zfreek” Freedman
David “Moo” Hull
Jimmy “DeMoN” Ho
Feras “Feero” Hroob
EGM to reunite with Akke at syndereN's new team
Featuring the likes of syndereN, Akke, Excalibur and BabyKnight, EGM has found his new home in Team Crescendo. Team Crescendo also features Jon '13abyKnight' Andersen back in action, in what seems to be the carry role this time, as cleared out by Akke in his recent tweet. While BabyKnight continued streaming under the banner of Cloud9 after they disbanded their roster, but his fans will certainly be elated at the fact that BabyKnight will be making a run for this year's International with fellow Dane syndereN and on the back of a beastly support duo.
Crescendo roster:
Jon '13abyKnight' Andersen
Steve 'Xcalibur' Ye
Troels 'syndereN' Nielsen
Jerry 'EGM' Lundkvist
Joakim 'Akke' Akterhall
Pablo joins Alliance as they lock their roster
On the back of Jerry 'EGM' Lundkvist and Alliance parting ways, the team has filled in their ranks with Axel 'Pablo' Källman. Axel will pick up the position 4 support role. Captain for Alliance, Jonathan 'Loda' Berg had the following to say on the team’s newest member and latest roster:
Alliance roster:
Jonathan 'Loda' Berg
Simon 'Handsken' Haag
Jonas 'jonassomfan' Lindholm
Axel 'Pablo' Källman
Linus 'Limmp' Blomdin
