The big story of Group A at Dreamhack Summer is the return of Na`Vi to the fray, and their being drawn with the elite team they have caused the most heartache over their history: mTw. While the former must once more prove they are the world's best team the latter is still looking to prove they can beat Na`Vi and looking to regain some momentum as one of the favourites for the big titles in 2011. Meanwhile Lions, Millenum and the BYOC qualifier will likely be caught in a tussle over the precious third playoff spot.

Group A

Millenium
TBD (BYOC qualifier)
mTw
Lions swe
Natus Vincere
KaoS



The favourites (Na`Vi and mTw)

Natus Vincere

Na`Vi are the best team in the world as far as of right now. Their victory at the IEM V World Championships over the their two biggest rivals for the #1 spot at the time, mTw and FX, put them back on top of the heap that week. Defeating FX, who have shown themselves to be the second best team on the block to this point, at ICSC7, even if it was by the slimmest of margins, seemed to confirm that Na`Vi's slip-up at the IEM V European Finals was just that, a slip-up, and now they have regained their standing as the best CS team on the planet.

Na`Vi's decision not to attend the Xperia PLAY event in April, while for good reasons, left the fans and the other elite teams feeling a little cheated as it meant no matter which team won that event they wouldn't be able to legitimately claim to be the best team in the world. Thankfully that's not the case for this event as Na`Vi are in attendance and can potentially face all the other teams who make up the top 5, with the exception of FX.

Na`Vi are the outright favourites to win this group not just because they are the best team in the world but also because the other elite team in the group is mTw, a team whose number they have had every single time they have met. The fact the two teams will meet on mirage this time around is a disappointing, since they are so closely matched on all of the other maps, but one still has to given Na`Vi the edge on the relatively unknown map, since they expressed their appreciation for the map at the last Dreamhack event and said they had practiced on it.

Of the other teams there's no reason right now to imagine they will give Na`Vi trouble in this group. The all-over-the-place Lions lineup will face the Ukrainians on tuscan, which has been a strong map for Na`Vi in many a tournament. The only map one can outright saw Na`Vi find themselves feeling uncomfortable on is nuke, which they will play against the BYOC qualifier, so it would be interesting if they somehow got drawn against a team like RG. Otherwise why would anyone assume Na`Vi won't exit this group directly to the semi-finals?

mTw

If they weren't set to face Na`Vi in this group I'd have predicted mTw would go undefeated with relative ease since I still feel like the Danes are the most well rounded team in the world and also the best at matching up against all types of opponent. Known as the best anti-stratters in the world mTw are able to make effective use of that information due to being the most versatile team tactically in terms of the different paces they can play at.

What has me interested to watch mTw's performance at this event is that it feels as though the Danish team might have peaked and shown us all they have to offer. Coming into the IEM V European Finals, with the rest of the CS world in turmoil, mTw looked like they had a clearcut opportunity to assert themselves as the world's best team. Instead they managed to let an overtime game against fnatic in the final get away from them and suddenly found themselves standing on the runnersup section of the podium.

Nevertheless with fnatic's new lineup shocking everyone to win the event, Na`Vi flunking out in 4th, SK failing in the group stage and the Danes edging out FX in their epic semi-final there was still a case to be made that if mTw weren't the best team then they were the strongest candidates for that spot. Then came the IEM V World Championships and a semi-final draw which saw mTw facing a Na`Vi side they had never defeated in a Bo3 series. History repeated itself and Na`Vi went on to defeat them yet again.

With Na`Vi sitting out Xperia PLAY the Danes really needed to keep apace of the Ukrainians by winning that event. Instead they got locked up in another semi-final war against FX, this time coming out the losers of another series which went the entire disatance. With FX taking the title mTw finds itself sitting on the outside looking in as far as the top of the ladder goes. They've played FX close in a win and a loss but their own loss to Na`Vi, and how close FX made that ASUS final, makes the Poles look like the #2 team right now.

Now is mTw's chance to stake their claim against for the crown. If they can defeat Na`Vi and go on to win Dreamhack Summer 2011 they'll be right back in the mix of the elite teams and the race might be wide open again. To do that will take more than exceptional play though. Na`Vi have shown that they can take mTw's punch time and time again and still come out the victors. mTw has looked good against the previous SK lineups and once again they need to show that Na`Vi and FX aside this a team which can beat anyone on a regular basis.

The group draw for mTw looks fine enough in terms of the maps, mirage might even have given them more of a chance to beat Na`Vi as chance may have it. The rest of the draws look fine, nuke isn't the right map for Lions to upset them and I can't see why they wouldn't be able to lock down Millenium on train. mTw is still the same team they were for the first part of 2011, they just didn't go that extra step and become something more. Still they have no reason to fear Group B's participants unduly and so, even if mTw finishes 2nd, they should be confident of being able to beat whoever finishes 3rd in Group B to move onto the semi-finals.


The dark horses (Lions and Millenium)

Lions swe

Lions is another team which felt like it had shown us all it was capable of over the last few months, and any feeling that they had realms of untapped potential was perhaps wishful thinking. A single group stage result might have cost them a better placing at the European Finals and definitely did at the World Championships. Still it wasn't coincidence which caused things to go the way they did, Lions have shown themselves to be inconsistent and flaky against a wide range of teams.

At Xperia PLAY they managed to lose to OK.fi and lost to SK much too easily on nuke. So that lineup of Lions seemed to have had its chances and failed to take a step beyond competing for the 5th-8th places at major tournaments. Another shakeup in the Swedish scene has left Lions significantly weaker as they've lost their best player, Gux, and are playing this event without their strat caller, threat. The former is very significant as Gux was the team's driving force and the one player who, based on his past accomplishments and experience, could be relied upon to be capable of going toe-to-toe with the best players' of the elite teams and giving Lions a chance at causing an upset.

Missing threat is highly significant as he was the ace up Lions' sleeve in my opinion. Right now the Swedish scene finds itself in a severe drought as far as tacticans go, even amongst the top teams, and one could even make this case this is the area the Swedes lack in the most compared the other elite teams out there. With threat lions might have given up a little raw aiming skill on one roster spot but they gained someone who brought a defined system of play to the same and an approach to how to play the better teams.

Instead this tournament sees Lions bringnig sNajdan out of relative obscurity to head a lineup which looks fairly confused to say the least. sNajdan comes with an impressive reputation in terms of annecdotes from people who've spent time about him but it's also worth remembering those stories tend to date back at least five years. Even if he still has some of his much-vaunted reading ability will that be relevant if the Lions teams can't execute what he calls or hasn't got the tools to play the style needed to defeate one of the better teams?

Even on a raw skill basis I have to be a little skeptical about this Lions teams. I thought one of the biggest things they had going for them overall in 2011 was that Gux's decision not to stay with fnatic, and the knock-on effect of niko declining an offer to join, had given Lions a more skilled lineup than they would have been capable of putting together if people had accepted offers to the better teams, as one might have expected. That's no longer the case and now Lions takes on the appearance of former Swedish lineups of Begrip, PlayZone and RG, being made up of players who have either been rejected, pushed out or simply not invited to the bigger teams.

I don't even know that I can pick Lions as a firm choice to come out of this group in third. I think they have a good chance but I also notice that they will face Millenium, the team most likely to snatch that third spot from them, on mirage. That neutralises any experience advantage sNajdan might have had and also leaves the possibility open that Lions might get beaten straight up by the French team, which they may well have done anyway on any other map.

Millenium

I don't know what to make of this Millenium lineup. My gut tells me they stand a legitimate shot of beating the weakened Lions lineup and taking third place to emerge from the group. They might even be able to play Na`Vi close on inferno, it's just very difficult to gauge where this team is at. In general I find French teams the most difficult to talk about because their scene is so closed off in comparison to the rest of the world and we only see them at these big tournaments. I would put them as 50-50 to beat Lions, maybe even 55-45 if Lions show the kind of chemistry problems I suspect they might.

This lineup is certainly a peculiarg mix as it contains three players still looking to prove themselves on the highest international level paired with two (HaRts and ioRek) who have past success to pride themselves on but still need to show they are capable of competing at a high level without some of their more skilled team-mates from that emuLate lineup of four years ago.


The rest (Kaos, TBD)

TBD (BYOC qualifier)
KaoS

I have nothing to say about KaoS. There's only so much time in each day so I limit my CS viewing to the most relevant teams, which obviously excludes the likes of KaoS. I believe, based on something I read in a forum comment, that RG might be fighting in the BYOC qualifier, which would make this group very interesting if they got through and were drawn here. Not only would they be a nice test for Na`Vi on nuke but they also would be favourites to beat both Millenium and Lions.