As usual we will talk about favourites and underdogs, but this time we will not have Christoffer Borregaard 'Ryze' Winther give us his vision about the groups. Since the tournament is well under way and SK Gaming is practising hard for upcoming events I decided to release this as it is.

We will start off with Group C. Group C, like Group A, has a lot of great teams playing and could be seen as another Group of Death. Below an overview:

Group C
Poor Happy Guys
Team Shakira
fnatic
EZ Style
Praeter Cunctas
EHOME

As posted some time ago, EHOME has been forfeited from the event because of not communicating with the organisation staff. On the bright side, this makes my Preview a bit easier since EHOME is always a contender to look out for. Poor Happy Guys was recently formed out of the same guys who played for The Elder Gods . Because of lack of support they decided to leave the famous Romanian organisation.


Favorites Group C:

Poor Happy Guys
Nicolae Alexandru 'Coco' Ionescu
Nicolae Alexandru 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescu
Florin Razvan 'Freezer' Stoica
Cristian 'ppasarel' Banaseanu
Ovidiu Leon 'Lyon' Chenderes
Adrian 's0ny' Sebastian

Unfortunately, Poor Happy Guys was not able to play in recent big events such as D2SC and Dreamhack but the guys from Romania did not sit still. Nicolae Alexandru 'Coco' Ionescu and Nicolae Alexandru 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescu placed top 3 in the eSahara-IHL and earned themselves some money while their team remained active in The Defense and InsideDOTA. They will play the final tonight versus NEXT.kz so be sure to check it out.

Team Shakira
Sébastien 'Fckinmad' Debs
Ylli 'Garter' Ramadani
Stum 'Maldejambes' Yoan
Pierre-Baptiste 'Ph0eNiiX' Pietet
Merloz 'Sockshka' Titouan

The team formerly known as Virus Gaming is always a strong team to look out for. At D2SC they got kicked out the upper brackets by Natus Vincere and at Dreamhack they placed 4th earning them a total prize amount of $1500. The French always have fun way of playing the game so it will be fun to see what they can do in this tournament.

fnatic
Andreja 'ANdre' Mahovic
Marko 'BAJA' Jovanovic
Gordan 'g0g1' Prosic
Nenad 'grizine' Lukic
Damir 'Mitch' Skaricic

fnatic is actually the old GamersLeague and is a very strong team. They placed 3rd at ESWC Paris, 2nd at Dreamhack Winter 2011 and recently lost to NEXT.kz in the insideDOTA Invitational tournament. They were one of the big missing teams at the D2SC in Kiev.


Underdogs Group C:

Both EZ Style and Praeter Cunctas are both underdogs but since this Preview will be lengthy as it is I will not further discuss these teams. They have played against each other and EZ Style came out on top.


To end we'll discuss Group D. The reason I talk about both groups at the same time is because of my lack of knowledge of the teams participating in Group D. We have Mousesports , MiTH.Trust and Evil Geniuses being the absolute favourites but Infused.Tt eSPORTS , Reinhardts Panzer Mannschaft and Storm Games Clan are fairly unknown to me so it's hard to say what these teams can do versus the absolute favourites.


Favorites Group D:

Mousesports
Mirsad 'DeMent' Djokovic
Antti 'Rexi' Saarenpää
Kalle 'Trixi' Saarinen
Visar 'twiSta' Zymberi
Wehsing 'SingSing' Yuen

Mousesports is one of those rising European teams. The team has been formed recently but has a long Dota and HoN history together. Now that their primary focus is on Dota 2, the team is improving fast. Their first Dota 2 tournament, D2SC was very fun to watch and I'm sure Wehsing 'SingSing' Yuen's Rhasta has given certain teams nightmares as teams started to counter-ban his ganking Rhasta. They placed 4th at D2SC and forfeited the InsideDOTA Invitational.

Evil Geniuses
Jimmy 'DeMoN' Ho
Clinton 'Fear' Loomis
Rasmus 'MiSeRy' Berth Filipsen
Pers Anders 'Pajkatt' Olsson Lille
Amel 'PlaymatE' Barudzija

I think this team doesn't need an introduction. Most players have played for the old Meet Your Makers so it will be fun to watch what this team will do in Dota 2. I am not aware of recent tournaments they've played in Dota 2 but their line-up is impressive to say the least. They are currently playing Dota, undergoing a fast exit in the SMM and are now standing 0-2 in their Group B in the G-League.

MiTH.Trust
Chanon 'aabBAA' Chiwpreecha
'Batz'
'Bnu'
'iix-'
Pipat 'LaKelz' Prariyachat
'SomeDays'
'TZ-'

To end the favourites we will talk about MiTH.Trust . Being one of the better teams of the Asian community this is certainly a team you could place your bets on. Placing 7th at The International and 2nd in the Dota 2 Malaysia Invitational losing the final to Orange Esports this team has definitely proven their worth.


Underdogs Group D:

As mentioned before, my knowledge about the other teams of this Group is lacking. Reinhardts Panzer Mannschaft is mostly referred to as Kuro 'KuroKy' Salehi Takhasomi +4 as he is the most known player of the team. All I can say is that Reinhardts Panzer Mannschaft already beat Storm Games Clan and Infused.Tt eSPORTS beat Reinhardts Panzer Mannschaft . Using a sophisticated method of ingenuous logic one can conclude that Infused.Tt eSPORTS is the underdog to look out for the most. But then again, I probably took my turn on two wheels there.



Al right, I think it's time we draw a line under the series and start working on other stuff. My examinations are coming up so I won't be having a lot of time to write big articles, but expect some stuff coming out soon once they are done. When Dota 2 starts implementing new heroes I'll make sure to give each hero the proper introduction and discuss item builds and let professional players have their say about what to think of the newly released heroes. I'll also start bringing in depth reviews of played finals but that's all stuff for February.

For now, enjoy The Defense, The Clash and the final of InsideDOTA being played today and I'm sure a lot more tournaments will be announced very soon.

Check out our previous parts here:
The Defense Preview (1/3)
The Defense Preview (2/3)