16 North American and 16 European teams were chosen by Curse Gaming to participate in their first International Invitational. They were divided into two separate brackets – one for NA and one for Europe, and the two top teams from each have probably already packed their luggage for San Fran. Let’s take a look at the four finalists:

1. Absolute Legends




The team showed incredible performance in the last few months, often winning against Moscow Five and Counter Logic Gaming EU, and is considered a top 3 EU team by most people. However that is only their second LAN event and the first one with their new top laner YoungBuck, so they lack a bit of experience in such tournaments. What’s more, their AP carry Vytautas 'extinkt' Mėlinauskas won’t be able to attend the final due to school obligations. The replacement for him is a bit of a surprise for most of us – the well known jungler Saintvicious. It will be a big challenge for him to play against the other 3 dedicated mid laners, but he’s definitely up for it. The teams’s recent tournament matches include a 1-2 loss from CLG.eu in the final of the IPL 5 1st Qualifier, a 2-1 win over Team Sypher in the Cdiscount Cup final and a 0-2 loss from SK Gaming in the TGS Pro Series.

2. Teamless



Probably the most unexpected of the attending teams, but no one can say they don’t deserve it after beating CLG.eu, Sypher and Natus Vincere on their way to the top. This is their first LAN tournament and they will be very eager to prove themselves, especially the top laner Angush, who will be burning with desire to get revenge against his old team Absolute Legends. One thing is 100% sure though, provided the NA teams did their homework – Teamless and Tabzz in particular would not be allowed to pick Fizz in any of their games. The team’s most recent official matches have been in the DreamHack qualifiers where they won over Eclypsia 1-0 and lost against fnatic 0-2.

3. Team SoloMid



After the 1st place at IPL 4, TSM went into a bit of a slump, visiting their families, playing other games and as a result not practicing seriously, but now they are probably thrilled to participate in another LAN and meet their new “brother” team Team SoloMid EVO. The team showed a decent improvement in the last week, winning 2-0 over Team Dignitas in the NESL Pro Series and getting first place in the SoloMid NA Invitational after coming back from the lower bracket, so they are certainly going to try to achieve the same thing in San Francisco.

4. Team SoloMid EVO



The former Epik Gamer, now finally having found a sponsor in the face of SoloMid.net, have gone through a number of changes since we last saw them offline at IPL 4. With the recruitment of Aphromoo, Unstoppable and Wingsofdeathx, they became a force to be reckoned with in the blink of an eye. There’s no doubt that they won’t have any mercy against the “original” TSM team and that they will try to prove they are the better one of the two, but whether we will witness another “brother” teams final is yet unclear. The team did really well in the RoG online matches winning over Team Curse and Counter Logic Gaming , but lost 1-2 from mTw NA in the IPL 5 1st Qualifier and 1-2 from Dignitas in the NESL Pro Series.

The 4 teams will play in a Best of Three, round-robin format and here’s the exact schedule for the matches:

1st June



2nd June



3rd June



The teams will receive a part of the $20 000 prize pool as following:



Who will take 1st place and half of the prize pool? I wouldn’t bet a whole lot of money on that, but my guess is TSM.Evo, because of the strong line-up and their will to show that they have finally become a serious contender for the Season 2 Championship. If Absolute Legends were going with their full roster, it would have been another story, but unfortunately that is not the case. Feel free to disagree and share your thoughts on who is going to be the winner in the comments section below.


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