Two invited teams will face off against six qualified sides for their chance to claim a share of the $50,000 prize pool and a spot at the ELEAGUE Boston Main Qualifier in January. 

The format for the CIS Minor will be the usual Minor format, consisting of two four-team GSL groups leading into a double-elimination playoff bracket. The top two teams will advance to the Major Main Qualifier where they will be pitted against teams from the previous Major, PGL Krakow, and the top teams from the other regional Minors in an attempt to qualify for the prestigious Major.

Below you can find the group draw in full:

Group A	Group B
Spirit	Tengri
Nemiga	AVANGAR
pro100	Quantum Bellator Fire
NOTBAD	forZe

Group A

Spirit (#48)	Age	Rating 2.0
Pavel "COLDYY1" Veklenko	25	1.14
Vadim "DavCost" Vasilyev	21	1.09
Dmitriy "Dima" Bandurka	22	1.08
Dmitry "S0tF1k" Forostyanko	23	1.03
Vladyslav "arch" Svistov	21	0.97

Offline results in the past three months
1st	Binary Dragons Prestige LAN

Spirit recently came into the spotlight again with the release of Sergey "starix" Ischuk from the active roster. The team hadn’t achieved the results they had wanted, certainly nothing better than their time before starix, and decided that a change was necessary. To replace the Ukrainian legend comes arch, who has been without a solid team since February, when he was on EPG, excluding his short stint in Prophecy for the Gfinity Elite Series.

COLDYY1 has been Spirit's top fragger

The two main stars of this team come in COLDYY1 and DavCost. COLDYY1 has notably attended every CIS Minor so far, but when his team made top two at the Minor leading into ELEAGUE Atlanta, he was unable to attend the Main Qualifier due to visa issues, and their coach Nikolay "Certus" Certus had to stand in. DavCost is known for his AWPing prowess as well as his time standing in for FlipSid3 at ESL Majors during the Aleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev era, as the Natus Vincere star was still banned from participating in ESL events.

This event will be a good time for Spirit to attempt to reclaim their throne in the lower-tier CIS world, and, based on recent form, they are certainly a favourite to advance to the playoffs and possibly one of the Major Qualifier spots.

Nemiga (#50)	Age	Rating 2.0
Vladimir "ROBO" Neskey	25	1.15
Roman "CyberFocus" Dergach	22	1.12
Aleksandr "mds" Rubets	19	1.10
Kirill "hitMouse" Tsarev	27	1.06
Roman "roman" Redihin	28	0.98

Offline results in the past three months
1st	META '17

Nemiga once again make their way to the Minor off of another team dropping out early. During the qualifier for the Krakow Minor, Hala Ares, who beat Nemiga, then K29, was disqualified for having a VAC-banned player, allowing for Nemiga to make their way to that Minor. This time, however, it is the team FONTAN who were unable to secure visas to Romania in time and were forced to pull out of the event.

This team has made a single roster move since the last Minor, however, with Igor "dERZKIY" Radosavlevich leaving and mds joining. The new addition has been solid so far, but the main player to watch out for is ROBO, who has put up some good numbers in various online cups in which the team has participated. The Belarusian squad's goals for this event will likely be to make the playoffs, and with Spirit and pro100 in their group, it’ll be a tough fight.

pro100 (#69)	Age	Rating 2.0
Leonard "kenzor" Volodarchuk	20	1.13
Vadim "Flarich" Karetin	21	1.11
Sergey "smike" Sklyarenko	19	1.06
Igor "crush" Shevchenko	22	0.96
Dima "def" Lemeshchuk	22	0.94

Offline results in the past three months
7th-8th	Binary Dragons Prestige LAN

pro100, rebooted by famed in-game leader Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko, is back to attend their second Minor in a row after making waves earlier this year, taking down Spartak for a spot in the playoffs of the Krakow Minor. The team has been relatively inactive, other than some online qualifiers and the ESEA MDL, but easily qualified for this event without dropping a map.

smike helped pro100 to a third-place finish at the previous Minor

The players to look for on this squad are certainly kenzor and Flarich. Flarich is notably the only Latvian player to attend the Minors, and will be looking to improve on his underwhelming performance from the previous one. pro100 will likely be neck and neck with CyberFocus’s men in the race for the second playoff spot behind Spirit, but mds adjusting to a new roster may just give the edge to the Ukrainians.

NOTBAD (#-)	Age	Rating 2.0
Maksim "t0rick" Zaikin	23	1.10
Alexey "BAS" Kustov	25	1.06
Nikita "Nyuma" Vasilyev	17	1.00
Mikhail "moonsh1n3" Popkov	22	0.95
Oleksandr "Shara" Hordieyev	25	0.94

NOTBAD is a mix-team consisting of FlipSid3 and spray'n'pray veteran Shara, ex-Spirit Academy player BAS, former Space Jam and Quantum Bellator Fire player moonsh1n3, Azerbaijani t0rick, and Belarusian Nyuma. This team is quite interesting as it contains five different nationalities, and also will be the debut of Azerbaijan at Minors.

This team qualified for the event after surprisingly taking down forZe in the round of 16 off the back of big performances from BAS and moonsh1n3. They shouldn’t be expected to do much in this event, but the players to watch for potential later down the line will be t0rick and Nyuma, the latter of whom is only 17 years old.

Group B

AVANGAR (#36)	Age	Rating 2.0
Alexey "qikert" Golubev	18	1.18
Timur "buster" Tulepov	17	1.09
Dmitry "dimasick" Matvienko	21	1.09
Ali "Jame" Djami	19	1.07
Aidyn "KrizzeN" Turlybekov	18	1.04

Offline results in the past three months
2nd	Binary Dragons Prestige LAN

This Kazakh squad took the CIS scene by storm earlier this year after being signed by AVANGAR in July. Previously under LOG, they were fairly close to qualifying for the Krakow Minor with current Tengri player Roma "flomaster" Tsay in their ranks, but fell to pro100 in the final match. They have risen through the ranks, placing top 2 in many online cups and beating nearly all of their fellow CIS teams at least once. They also briefly made the top 30 in our rankings in mid-September and early October.

Busterjkee's AVANGAR have been in great form recently

The most dangerous player on this team is 18-year-old qikert, who put up huge numbers in the Stream.me Gauntlet CIS vs EU #10, SL i-League Invitational Shanghai 2017 CIS Qualifier, and the qualifier for this Minor. Their single LAN in the last three months was the Binary Dragons Prestige, where they placed second to Spirit. This team should definitely be expected to make the playoffs, and are one of the contenders for that Major Qualifier spot.

Quantum Bellator Fire (#61)	Age	Rating 2.0
Kirill "Boombl4" Mikhailov	18	1.09
Nikita "waterfaLLZ" Matveyev	22	1.03
Savelii "jmqa" Bragin	20	1.05
Aurimas "Kvik" Kvakšys	21	1.02
Gregory "balblna" Oleinick	21	0.96

Offline results in the past three months
1st	WESG Russia LAN
7th-8th	Binary Dragons Prestige LAN

Since the last Minor, this lineup has gone through significant changes, retaining only 2 members from their fourth place run in June. balblna is one of the two remaining players to attend every CIS Minor to date, alongside COLDYY1. Up until this event, Yaroslav "It's my" Ushkov and Alexander "uNdo" Kiziukevich had also attended the four previous Minors, but due to leaving this team and failing to qualify with Space Jam, their streak ends now.

The field is much tougher this Minor, and with an upgraded forZe and two Kazakh threats in their group, it’ll be a tough road to the playoffs. Regardless, the player to watch will be Boombl4, the 18-year-old who previously played on Dmitry "hooch" Bogdanov's EPG.

forZe (#70)	Age	Rating 2.0
Anatoliy "liTTle" Yashin	29	1.18
Emil "kUcheR" Akhundov	29	1.13
Dmitriy "facecrack" Alekseyev	23	1.10
Andrey "Jerry" Mekhryakov	19	1.05
Anton "tonyblack" Kolesnikov	24	1.03

forZe is an interesting storyline going into this Minor, as they only made it here via a Last Chance Qualifier that was created due to Fantazeri pulling out of the event. They contain the core that attended the last Minor as Spartak except Dmitriy "propleh" Senigov, whose spot is currently occupied by CIS legend kUcheR after Almaz "almazer" Asadullin was released. The team has got some up and down results, managing to beat FlipSid3 in the SL i-League Invitational Shanghai CIS Qualifier, but losing to NOTBAD in the qualifier for the Minor.

Will kUcher's experience help forZe to survive the group?

The big player in this team has always been 29-year-old AWPer liTTle, who has been essentially a hard-carry even back to his days on FLuffy Gangsters. kUcheR’s return to the scene after a year of inactivity will also be interesting to follow, as the question of whether he can return to his old form will likely be answered in Bucharest this week.

Tengri (#100)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ramazan "Ramz1kBO$$" Bashizov	17	1.27
Roma "flomaster" Tsay	18	1.08
Aleksandr "SNk" Semkin	21	1.02
Anuar "sonic" Abu	26	1.00
Nurbol "hpp" Dyussembayev	22	0.88

The former best Kazakh team Tengri has undergone quite a few changes in the last months, which unfortunately weren’t for the better. After losing one of their two star players to Gambit in Bektiyar "fitch" Bahytov, SNk was forced to step down from the team due to a family emergency. It was later announced that SNk would return to the active lineup and replace Bakir "pachanga" Kurbanaliev, who was benched. To fill the two empty spots, Tengri decided on signing hpp from zARLANS and flomaster from AVANGAR.

Ramz1kBO$$ continues to be the main star of the team, but neither hpp nor flomaster has lived up to the fragging of fitch. This tournament will be a great time for Tengri to reclaim their status as #1 in Kazakhstan (if you disregard Gambit, of course), but they’ll have to go through Quantum Bellator Fire and forZe to have a chance at repeating their second place from earlier this year.