Today saw the entirety of the “Bring Your Own Computer” qualifier and the first group stage games take place with the remaining games being played tomorrow.
BYOC Qualifier
Unlike previous DreamHack tournaments, this event only saw 5 teams participate in the open qualifier with 4 of them making it to the main tournament meaning that only one team would be knocked out in this phase.
The four teams that made it through were Honor Esports, a team made up of much of the Team Potatoes squad which finished in 4th at the Canadian Nationals, Grizzleys, who finished in 3rd at the Canadian Nationals, as well as N4N1 and KoRe, teams made up of relatively unknown players.
Group A
Teams: Evil Geniuses, Cloud9, Mock-it Esports and Grizzlys
The first match of the day between Mock-it and Cloud9 saw a chance for both teams to test their new roster; Mock-it recently picked up 2 new players and transitioned from French to English communication, while this would be the first DreamHack tournament for Cloud9 with MarktheShark on the roster having played at Austin and Valencia with Schlongii instead.
The game went down to the wire in a 3 map matchup, 2 of which went to overtime, before the standout plays of LaXIng eventually closed out the game 4-6, 7-5, 7-5 in the favour of the NA team.
The second game in the group saw Evil Geniuses take on the BYOC team of Grizzleys off-stream in what was expected to be a walkover for EG. Evil Geniuses’s, despite playing with the recent addition of Geometrics, made short work of their opponents winning 6-1, 6-1.
Group B
Teams: Millenium, Spacestation Gaming, SK Gaming and N4N1
The first game of the day saw the current #1 team in NA Pro League, SK Gaming, play a Spacestation Gaming side playing with the new addition of Bryan replacing the departed Shuttle. While this game did go down to 3 maps, the first two weren’t particularly close ending in a 6-3, 0-6, 6-4 result in favour of SSG.
This somewhat surprising result probably can be attributed to SK’s severe lack of LAN experience with many of their players last LANs being 15 months ago at the Season 4 Finals. As well as this neither Ezley or BKN, their coaches, were in attendance which would have given SSG a partial advantage.
The second game in this group saw the DreamHack Austin champions of Millenium take on the unknown team of N4N1. Despite recently picking up a new player, AceeZ, and needing to transition from French to English comms, Millenium made short work of their opponents ending it in a quick 6-1, 6-0 scoreline.
Group C
Teams: Team Secret, Bootkamp, Noble esports and Honor Esports
In a surprisingly dominant scoreline, the 5th placed LATAM team of Bootkamp Gaming defeated the 5th placed team in NA, Noble esports, 6-1, 4-6, 6-1. As LATAM’s only representative at the tournament, this would be a welcome showing after their region’s disappointing performance at the Paris Major in which the top 2 placed teams in Pro League went out in straight games.
The second game saw the reigning DreamHack champions of Team Secret play against a team known well within the Canadian Nationals tournament but little elsewhere. The game started in shocking fashion as the underdogs took the first 3 rounds back-to-back reminding people of Evil Geniuses 2-0 loss against the BYOC team of Disrupt Gaming back in DreamHack Austin however, unlike EG back then, Team Secret managed to pull together and strike back taking the next 12 rounds back-to-back and winning the game 6-3, 6-0.
Team D
Teams: Rogue, Chaos, mousesports and KoRe
As the only group not to have any streamed games so far it is hard to tell exactly how teams are fairing overall, however, Chaos’ surprise 6-4, 6-1 victory over mouseports is a clear indication that the all-Swedish team is determined to retain their record of making it to the knockout stages of both DreamHacks so far this year.
The second game in the group saw Rogue with the 2 new, previously-unannounced, players of Supr and Shuttle in their roster to play against the 4th seeded BYOC team of KoRe which, despite a likely lack of practice with the new players, Rogue managed to close out in a simple 6-1, 6-0.
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You can watch the highlights of these games right here with the rest of the action resuming on Saturday at 10AM EDT.
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