Europe Minor Preview

This Minor, which leads up to the ELEAGUE 2018 Major, will follow the standard format for these events, with the eight attending squads being split into two groups. The groups will be played out using a combination of BO1's and BO3's in a double-elimination bracket.

The PGL Studios will once again host the Europe Minor

Two teams from each group will advance to the BO3, double-elimination playoffs, with the two best-placed teams earning spots at the ELEAGUE 2018 Major Main Qualifier. Along with the two qualifier spots, $50,000 will be up for grabs, with the lion's share, $30,000, put aside for the eventual champion.

Bucharest and the PGL Studios will once again play host to the tournament, making this the fourth time that the Romanian company will be in charge of the European Minor Championship.

The following teams will attend the event:

Group A	Group B
Envy	Space Soldiers
AGO	OpTic
GODSENT	eXtatus
Windigo	PRIDE

A diverse group of teams and players will be fighting for a spot at the Main Qualifier, with Envy, Space Soldiers and OpTic the three biggest names on paper. There is a distinction to be made, however, as the Turkish squad have never even made it to a Major qualifier, while the other two teams feature Major winners—Vincent "⁠Happy⁠" Schopenhauer and Adam "⁠friberg⁠" Friberg.

On the other hand, we have teams such as eXtatus and PRIDE, who don't have too much experience and look like outsiders at the event, GODSENT, who are struggling to live up to their potential, and AGO and Windigo, two teams who are looking to upset with a combination of experienced and young players.

Ratings used are from the past three months on LAN
* indicates online rating

Group A

Envy (#14)	Age	Rating 2.0
Cédric "⁠RpK⁠" Guipouy	28	1.19
Adil "⁠ScreaM⁠" Benrlitom	23	1.04
Vincent "⁠Happy⁠" Schopenhauer	25	0.94
Alexandre "⁠xms⁠" Forté	20	0.90
Christophe "⁠SIXER⁠" Xia	26	0.84

Offline placings in the past three months
5th-8th	ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2017
7th-8th	ESL One New York 2017
7th-8th	ESG Tour Mykonos 2017
13th-16th	DreamHack Masters Malmö 2017

Out of all the teams to play in Bucharest this week, Envy are the only squad who have competed at tier 1 LAN's in the past three months. Yes, the Frenchmen were far from brilliant in those tournaments, finishing in last place at three out of the four events they have attended since the player break, but the last one, ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier, was where they broke that streak, reaching the playoffs over Ninjas in Pyjamas and Virtus.pro, which is a positive sign.

In recent times, Envy have been powered by RpK as the 28-year-old has rediscovered his early CS:GO form and now shows up for his side game after game. ScreaM continues to be the second star of this team even though he somewhat continues to blow hot and cold. However, if ScreaM and RpK go off at the same time, no team at the minor, except maybe OpTic, will be able to do much against Envy.

RpK has been brilliant for EnVyUs

Even though seeing RpK and ScreaM have big games simultaneously isn't a common occurrence, which has caused Envy some issues in the past, the Frenchmen shouldn't be too scared—due to a lower level of competition, Happy, xms and especially SIXER should be able to do more for their team at the Minor then they did at recent offline events.

Not only the highest ranked team at the event but also the one with the longest history together, Envy have a level of cohesion and a map pool that other teams shouldn't be able to match. What has to be considered, though, is that we have seen before Envy come into a Europe Minor as one of the favorites and fail miserably. There is a danger of that happening again—OpTic are a strong team, Space Soldiers are always dangerous, and there are other exciting rosters at the event that can upset. Envy are one the favorites at the Minor, but they cannot afford to give any team in Bucharest an inch—because they could take a mile.

AGO (#26)	Age	Rating 2.0
Mateusz "⁠TOAO⁠" Zawistowski	21	1.14
Michał "⁠snatchie⁠" Rudzki	19	1.13
Damian "⁠Furlan⁠" Kislowski	22	1.12
Dominik "⁠GruBy⁠" Swiderski	22	1.12
Tomasz "⁠phr⁠" Wójcik	21	1.07

Offline placings in the past three months
2nd	NGC Masters 2017
2nd	ESL Polish Championship Summer 2017
9-16th	Cross Border Esport 2017

Until recently a fairly unknown side, AGO broke into the top 30 after placing second at the NGC Masters 2017 LAN, where they cruised to the grand final before losing on two tight maps to Tricked. The team consists of three newcomers—phr, snatchie and TOAO, formerly of iNETKOXTV—and two players who have already attended Majors—GruBy and Furlan.

Furlan is looking to earn a spot at another Major Qualifier

The squad is well balanced in terms of firepower, with only phr lagging behind the quartet a bit. Interestingly, TOAO, who is the team's in-game leader, leads in the LAN rating department, with the team's main AWPer, snatchie, following closely.

AGO are coming into the Minor on a high due to their impressive online results, with a victory over their country's legends, Virtus.pro, on their list of recent achievements. The Poles will be hoping to bring over their form to LAN, despite this being just the third international LAN in the ex-iNETKOXTV trio's career—and the biggest one yet. On the other hand, GruBy and Furlan have made it through similar situations in the past, and that combination could prove key for AGO making it out of Group A. Even if they pass the first hurdle, beating the likes of OpTic and Space Soldiers in the playoffs for a place in Atlanta won't be an easy task for the Poles.

Learn more about AGO by reading our feature on the team: AGO - The seasoned and the rookies come together in pursuit of success. 

GODSENT (#31)	Age	Rating 2.0
Simon "⁠twist⁠" Eliasson	22	1.11*
Joakim "⁠disco doplan⁠" Gidetun	22	1.06*
Dennis "⁠dennis⁠" Edman	26	1.04*
Fredrik "⁠freddieb⁠" Buö	23	1.03*
Andreas "⁠znajder⁠" Lindberg	24	0.94*

Seeing a team of GODSENT's caliber not having a single LAN attended in the past three months is an early warning side when talking about the Swedes and their chances at the Minor. The team that has once again been raided by fnatic, who picked up Jonas "⁠Lekr0⁠" Olofsson, has not had much success since the latest roster change, which saw freddieb and dennis join the fold.

The lack of LAN events is a result of GODSENT failing in online qualifiers, with PRIDE taking them out of the EPICENTER one, HAVU beating them on their way to SL i-League Invitational Shanghai, and Windigo, who are in their group at the Minor this week, beating them in the IEM Oakland qualifier.

disco doplan is back to the Minor

Looking at their poor online results, it seems like the new GODSENT squad is still lacking synergy. twist is putting up good numbers, but the team is unable to convert those performances into wins, and that is reflected in their standings in the two main online leagues as well—they sit in the lower half of both EPL and ECS.

Going in GODSENT's favor is the experience the team possesses as a whole, disco doplan and freddieb have been to a bunch of Minors, while twist, dennis and znajder have all made deep Major runs, with znajder even winning one in 2013. But all of that will be for nought if the Swedes don't get their team running properly, and we haven't seen anything to convince us that will be happening soon.

Windigo (#38)	Age	Rating 2.0
Georgi "⁠SHiPZ⁠" Grigorov	17	1.15
Nikolay "⁠pNshr⁠" Paunin	25	1.11
Kamen "⁠bubble⁠" Kostadinov	26	1.06
Nikolay "⁠niki1⁠" Pantaleev	26	1.06
Teodor "⁠SPELLAN⁠" Nikolov	19	1.05

Offline placings in the past three months
5th-6th	ESL Clash of Nations

After a series of player changes that happened after Tsvetelin "⁠CeRq⁠" Dimitrov departed what was Outlaws at the time, the Bulgarians finally have a set roster. In the process, the squad made an important move, adding to the team one of the country's best and most experienced players, bubble.

Playing under ex-Outlaws, the squad showed some promise in initial online matches, picking up wins against side such as Heroic, Envy and eXtatus online, and finishing in the top 4 of the regional league EBL, earning a spot at the LAN final.

Can bubble's team recover from a poor showing in Spain last week?

The team didn't impress at their first LAN event, however, as they ended 5th-6th at the ESL Clash of Nations, losing to Endpoint and Movistar Riders. Considering that the best team at the event was Kinguin, who didn't even make it to the Minor, the Bulgarian side, who recently signed for Windigo, look shaky coming into the Bucharest.

Windigo still have a chance to make it through Group A as Envy are the only clear favorite there, with the other teams being fairly close. If they want to make it through, they will probably be hoping that bubble shows up in good form and that youngster SHiPZ doesn't get affected by the pressure in Bucharest.

Group B

Space Soldiers (#20)	Age	Rating 2.0
Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş	22	1.35
Ahmet "⁠paz⁠" Karahoca	20	1.21
Buğra "⁠Calyx⁠" Arkın	19	1.18
Engin "⁠MAJ3R⁠" Küpeli	26	1.13
Engin "⁠ngiN⁠" Kor	24	1.08

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	ESEA S25 MDL Global Challenge LAN

Similarly to Envy, Space Soldiers are a team that has been together much longer than the average Minor team, and that shows in the stability of their results and their HLTV ranking. The team's win at the ESEA S25 MDL Global Challenge LAN, which was their only LAN in the last three months, was orchestrated by XANTARES, who continues to put up impressive numbers.

XANTARES is hoping his team can finally make it to a Major Qualifier

Following him in the fragging department are paz and Calyx, while ngiN, who came into the first squad to replace Çağatay "⁠DESPE⁠" Sedef, hasn't been shining that much. One of the issues for the side is that no one in the team seems to be comfortable with the AWP—ngiN has been using the Big Green the most, but as his stats show, not to great success.

If Space Soldiers manage to get past the AWPing issue, the raw firepower, combined with the longevity of the roster, which is well drilled under MAJ3R's leadership, should make the Turkish side one of the favorites to make it far in this Minor and potentially even break their curse, reaching their first Major Qualifier.

OpTic (#27)	Age	Rating 2.0
Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif	19	1.22*
Oscar "⁠mixwell⁠" Cañellas	22	1.16*
Aleksi "⁠allu⁠" Jalli	25	1.13*
Kevin "⁠HS⁠" Tarn	20	1.00*
Adam "⁠friberg⁠" Friberg	26	0.98*

Just a quick glance at the player list is enough to see that OpTic don't look like a team that belongs at a Minor. The European team packs quite a bit of punch, with the likes of allu, Magisk and mixwell all able to take over matches and win them almost singlehandedly. Even though the trio might be hard to balance from time to time, it seems that HS and friberg are supporting them well enough to allow them to shine.

Since the players came together, OpTic have had solid online results, and qualified for the European Minor without any issues, but unfortunately they have not had the chance to play a LAN together yet. That could be a small issue for them and eventually lead to a slow start, but it shouldn't prove costly for friberg and co., who can always recover in the BO3 stages.

The Minor will be OpTic's first LAN event

Even though their experience comes from playing in different teams, man for man, OpTic have the most exposure to big events and high-pressure situations out of all the teams from Group B. friberg is still a new in-game leader, but the team, which  is burning to play a LAN again, should grab one of the Main Qualifier spots - not doing so would be "a big fail", as mixwell admitted.

eXtatus (#32)	Age	Rating 2.0
David "⁠frozen⁠" Čerňanský	15	1.46
Martin "⁠MonttY⁠" Melišek	18	1.30
Patrik "⁠DEV7L⁠" Stuchlík	21	1.28
Richard "⁠queztone⁠" Strnátko	21	1.25
Jindřich "⁠ZEDKO⁠" Chyba	19	1.23

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	Cross Border Esport 2017

eXtatus, who are the first predominantly Slovakian team to attend a Minor, are powered by 15-year-old wunderkind frozen. The youngster and the team as a whole have not had a lot of exposure to LAN events of this caliber, which could prove to be an issue. eXtatus did, however, win their last offline event, the 24-team Cross Border Esport 2017, where frozen averaged a stunning 1.46 rating.

A lot of eyes will be on eXtatus' frozen

The Slovakians will be hoping that their star shines in Bucharest this week, as that looks like their best chance to pick up the scalp of a big team such as OpTic and Space Soldiers—something they haven't been so successful at. Their rise to the top 30 was a more gradual one as they managed to consistently beat teams who are close to them in the ranking. That will have to change if they plan to advance to the playoffs of the Minor, but it's more likely that they will have to settle for the Romanian event being just something to gain experience from.

PRIDE (#39)	Age	Rating 2.0
Jacek "⁠MINISE⁠" Jeziak	23	1.13
Piotr "⁠morelz⁠" Taterka	23	1.12
Paweł "⁠reatz⁠" Jańczak	22	1.10
Tomasz "⁠ToM223⁠" Richter	19	1.08
Maciek "⁠Luz⁠" Bugaj	23	0.95

Offline placings in the past three months
1st	Polish Cup Cybersport
3rd-4th	ESL Polish Championship Summer 2017

PRIDE are yet another team that has been grinding a lot of online matches in recent months, and they finally had their breakthrough by qualifying for the Minor. The Poles opened the Closed Qualifier badly, losing to HellRaisers and Binary Dragons (now Valiance), but took wins over LDLC, TEAM5 and finally Ninjas in Pyjamas to make it to Bucharest.

The main duo of the team feature their AWPer, MINISE, who has already attended a Major—DreamHack Winter 2014—and morelz, who has spent his whole playing career in PRIDE but has only recently started getting some more attention.

MINISE is the most experienced member of PRIDE

Without any other notable results, and their only LAN outings being local events, PRIDE will have a hard time at the Minor. The squad is in a similar position to eXtatus, maxing out their potential by earning a spot at the event, and will probably have to settle on just being a participant, not a contender, at the Minor.