Less than a month after the Season 2 World Championship it’s time for the next offline event. It’s the third consecutive MLG Championship for this year which includes League of Legends and this time there are 8 invited teams from across North America, Europe and South Korea. Only one of the top 4 finishers from Season 2 will be present in the tournament so the outcome is pretty open. Let’s have a look at the participants:

CLG.eu – Europe’s hope

Counter Logic Gaming EU is the only European team in the tournament (it has been mentioned that Moscow Five declined their invitation because of visa issues of one of their players) and will have to defend the pride of the Old continent. It won’t be an easy task given the fact that Mitch 'Krepo' Voorspoels won’t be able to join his team in their trip to Dallas. His substitute will be Alexander 'Jree' Bergström, a fairly unknown but talented support player. Without much team practice since the Season 2 Championship due to some players going back to Europe and others staying in USA and without Krepo’s insight and great calls during team fights, CLG.eu will probably not show their A game. Regardless Henrik 'Froggen' Hansen can always carry.

Korea’s challenge featuring a Blaze and a Sword

Two of South Korea’s finest teams have been invited to MLG Dallas and most people are expecting them to continue their dominance over the NA squads. NaJin Sword led by one of the most loved by the fans players, Yoon 'MaKNooN' Ha-woon, are coming back to the States after a great performance in the group stage at the Season 2 World Championship and will definitely aim for a top finish this time. Their first game is against Counter Logic Gaming which promises a super exciting matchup between MaKNooN and George 'HotshotGG' Georgallidis.

Azubu Blaze, who were denied a spot among the 12 best teams in the world by none other than NaJin Sword, are also coming for the second time in USA. Their previous visit was for the MLG Summer Arena where they only dropped one game. This time though they are missing one of their star players Bok 'Reapered' Han-gyu, who recently left the team. Just a couple of days ago they announced their new top laner Lee 'Flame' Ho-Jong but he won’t be able to participate in the tournament. They’ll be using Azubu Frost ‘s top laner Park 'Shy' Sang-myun which hopefully means we will witness some amazing Singed plays.

North America’s usual suspects

The remaining 5 participants in the tournament are from the North American region which is by no means a surprise given the fact that the previous MLG event was even NA only. First, we have Team SoloMid and Team Dignitas who will be dying to show their best after a rather disappointing performance at the Season 2 World Championship.

We’ll also see CLG with their yet again new line-up. Have Choi 'Locodoco' Yoon-sub and Peter 'DoubleLift' Peng built a good synergy in bot lane? Have Steve 'Chauster' Chau and Hotshot learned/relearned their new roles? They had only about a week to do that and it most probably wasn’t enough, so maybe we shouldn’t expect miracles out of them.

Team Curse are just coming back from their trip to China where they participated in the World eSports Masters. Their performance there was definitely not what people expected – they lost their first matches in both winners and losers bracket and were eliminated from the tournament. Now at MLG they will be facing teams they are much more familiar with so the results should be better.

Dynamic is the last team that will participate at MLG Dallas. They have recently announced their newest addition – the AD carry Brandon 'DontMashme' Phan, who replaced Derek 'zig' Shao. What’s more, they also removed from the team their AP carry Eric 'MrParadoXical' Lomore and will be playing with Orbit Gaming 's Zach 'Nientonsoh' Malhas as a substitute. This will probably lower their chances for a top finish even more.

Predictions

The tournament will show us a mix of teams with established line-ups and teams with recent changes or unfortunate substitutes. Despite their recent results in Korea which weren't stellar, I would still give the edge to the two Asian teams, the likes of which have undoubtedly shown everyone that they are on top of the League of Legends competitive scene at the moment. The other team with high chances for the top 3 in my opinion is TSM - after all they didn't win 6 offline events in the last half a year by pure luck.

Quarterfinal matchups


Prize pool


Tournament format


The tournament will be casted by Leigh "Deman" Smith, Joshua "Jatt" Leesman, David “Phreak” Turley, Christopher "MonteCristo" Mykles and Tom "Optimus Tom" Searfoss so free your weekend and get ready for some top notch games with great commentary!