CIS Minor Preview

The CIS Minor for the FACEIT London Major is coming up soon, with two spots available that grant spots at the offline qualifier, which will run from July 10-13 at the Twickenham Stadium, in London.

Unlike some of the other CIS Minors, all spots were filled through a closed qualifier, which had eight invited teams and eight teams determined by open qualifiers.

With Nemiga unable to attend the event due to visa issues, the tournament has been reduced from eight to seven teams, who have been drawn into two double-elimination groups that look as follows:

Group A	Group B
HellRaisers	AVANGAR
PLINK	Spirit
pro100	FORZE
	Monolith

The top two sides of both groups will progress to the double-elimination, best-of-three playoffs. In addition to the two spots in FACEIT Major's New Challengers Stage, the competing teams will also vie for their share of a $50,000 prize pool.

Group A

HellRaisers (#17)	Age	Rating
Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker	19	1.19
Issa "⁠ISSAA⁠" Murad	21	1.16
Vladyslav "⁠bondik⁠" Nechyporchuk	25	1.04
Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow	28	0.97
Bence "⁠DeadFox⁠" Böröcz	23	0.92

Offline placings in the last three months
2nd	Moche XL Esports
12th-14th	StarSeries i-League Season 5
2nd	DreamHack Open Tours

This will actually be the first time that this core of players under the HellRaisers banner will take the path to the Major via the CIS Minor. During their other qualifying runs, they played via the Europe Minor due to their player composition. However, due to having two players zoned for CIS, two for Europe, and one from Asia, HellRaisers was able to choose between CIS and Europe.

This team should easily glide to the playoffs, especially considering they have automatically moved to the winners' match following Nemiga's withdrawal, and should even be able to secure a top two placing quite easily, with the international team having participated in many large-scale events recently and being a regular in the ESL Pro League.

HellRaisers are red-hot favourites for the event

HellRaisers' last offline appearance came a month ago, and fans of this team will be hoping for an improved side. At Moche XL Esports, ANGE1's side were almost sent packing by Giants, even though they would acquit themselves a bit better in the final against the now MIBR roster. 

In terms of star potential, look no further than woxic, who can be an extremely dominant AWPer, especially against lower competition, and has averaged a sensational 1.22 rating on LAN this year. 

PLINK (#69)	Age	Rating
Rassim "⁠Jyo⁠" Valijev	23	1.16	*
Roman "⁠rommi⁠" Golubev	25	1.15	*
Aleksey "⁠1uke⁠" Zimin	25	1.07	*
Kristjan "⁠fejtZ⁠" Allsaar	20	0.95	*
Danila "⁠redhide⁠" Demidov	18	0.93	*

The duo of 1uke and rommi have made their return to the CIS Minor, having attended previous ones together under Quest and Spirit Academy. Alongside them, they have brought the first two Estonians to play the CIS Minors, Jyo and stand-in fejtZ, the latter of whom currently plays for boxr in North America.

It’s hard to say what this team will be capable of at the Minor, as they mainly beat the lower teams during the qualifier, but it is worth noting that they showed great mental fortitude, having qualified for the event after losing their first two matches in the Swiss stage. 

fejtZ will fly from Canada to London to help the team

PLINK's 2-0 victory over fellow Minor attendees Monolith in QIWI TEAM PLAY came as a timely boost for the team. rommi and Jyo have been their two key players, with high ratings in the past three months. However, fejtZ will also be one to watch as he tends to shine at these small-scale tournaments.

pro100 (#72)	Age	Rating
Ivan "⁠AiyvaN⁠" Semenets	22	1.30
Dima "⁠def⁠" Lemeshchuk	23	1.25
Leonard "⁠kenzor⁠" Volodarchuk	21	1.20
Svyatoslav "⁠svyat⁠" Dovbakh	23	1.19
Vadim "⁠Flarich⁠" Karetin	21	1.11	*

Offline placings in the last three months
1st	ASUS National Cybersport League

This will be the third Minor for the revived pro100 organization, this time fielding a new look roster. After Sergey "⁠smike⁠" Sklyarenko was benched and Igor "⁠crush⁠" Shevchenko transferred to Vega Squadron, the team picked up old teammate AiyvaN (previously known as F1L1N) as well as svyat, who had just been signed by FORZE.

pro100 have looked quite solid in the matches they’ve played recently, only dropping a series to Nemiga in the qualifier for this event. The main star of this lineup of pro100 has actually been AiyvaN, contrasted to Flarich in the past, while kenzor has also continued consistent performances. With their group only featuring three teams, there is a high chance of them advancing to the playoffs if they manage to fend off the threat of PLINK.

Group B

AVANGAR (#27)	Age	Rating
Timur "⁠buster⁠" Tulepov	18	1.02
Dzhami "⁠Jame⁠" Ali	19	1.01
Dmitry "⁠dimasick⁠" Matvienko	22	1.01
Aidyn "⁠KrizzeN⁠" Turlybekov	18	0.97
Alexey "⁠Qikert⁠" Golubev	19	0.95

Offline placings in the last three months
4th	GG.BET Majestic - ESL One Cologne Qualifier
9th-11th	StarSeries i-League Season 5
2nd	Adrenaline Cyber League 2018

This squad will return to the Minor with the same lineup as the previous, despite a short stint using Ramazan "⁠Ramz1kBO$$⁠" Bashizov. They have had a pretty large drop in form from the last Minor cycle however, dropping series to ENCE and Windigo in the past month. They did have a strong performance in the Minor qualifier, however, taking down FORZE and only losing to Spirit.

Can AVANGAR make another Major appearance?

They should still make the playoffs and vie for a top two spot, but could have trouble going against the likes of pro100 or Spirit depending on the matchups. Since his return, Jame has had a good increase in form, and is along with Qikert one of the players to watch for.

Spirit (#32)	Age	Rating
Viktor "⁠sdy⁠" Orudzhev	21	1.17
Pavel "⁠COLDYY1⁠" Veklenko	26	1.10
Vadim "⁠DavCost⁠" Vasilyev	22	1.03
Dmitriy "⁠Dimaoneshot⁠" Bandurka	23	1.03
Dmitry "⁠S0tF1k⁠" Forostyanko	23	0.86

Offline placings in the last three months
2nd	GG.BET Majestic - ESL One Cologne Qualifier
2nd	ESEA Season 27 MDL Global Challenge
4th	ESL Pro League Season 7 Europe Relegation

Spirit returns for their fourth consecutive Minor, and the sixth in a row for COLDYY1. This will be the first Minor for sdy and the fifth for the other three players. They sit in around the same position as the last few Minors, as one of the top dogs participating.

At the previous Minor, Spirit were just one map away from qualifying for the Major as they lost to Quantum Bellator Fire in the consolidation final. Now, with a strengthened roster featuring in-form sdy and more international experience after competing in Leicester, Spirit will be looking to go one better than in Bucharest and will be eyeing AVANGAR's scalp in the group stage. 

Spirit's chances in London cannot be written off

The main two players to look out for on this squad are the Ukrainians COLDYY1 and sdy, but AWPer DavCost can also put up some substantial numbers.

FORZE (#62)	Age	Rating
Andrey "⁠Jerry⁠" Mekhryakov	20	1.22
Dmitriy "⁠facecrack⁠" Alekseyev	24	1.18
Almaz "⁠almazer⁠" Asadullin	19	1.15
Bogdan "⁠xsepower⁠" Chernikov	20	1.06
Artyom "⁠malik⁠" Arhipov	23	1.02

Offline placings in the last three months
2nd	M.Game League 2 Finals

The forZe organization returns for their second Minor, but with an overhauled roster, only keeping facecrack and Jerry from the previous event. This marks the return of almazer however, who was on the active lineup previously but did not play a Minor with them. facecrack is the most experienced of the five, having already attended four Minors with the Method / ANOX core as well as the Spartak / FORZE core.

Despite having many unknown players, this team has some decent upset potential depending on the matchups. The star player seems to be xsepower who joined in March and raised eyebrows in the online portion of M.Game League 2 with an average 1.23 rating. It’s unlikely for this team to make the playoffs, but they could ruin another team’s tournament if they are taken lightly.

Monolith (#95)	Age	Rating
Mareks "⁠YEKINDAR⁠" Gaļinskis	18	1.15	*
Aleksei "⁠NickelBack⁠" Trofimov	20	1.14	*
Alexander "⁠spiker⁠" Ivanov	24	1.07	*
Alexey "⁠ub1que⁠" Polivanov	26	1.01	*
Dmitriy "⁠propleh⁠" Senigov	21	0.98	*

This team sees two old faces make a return to the upper CIS level as well as the Minors in ub1que and spiker, whose last Minor attendances were in 2016. Stand-in YEKINDAR, formerly of EPG, is the one player on this team who will be a Minor rookie, with every other player having played at least one. What’s also interesting is the core members essentially came from separate former teams and banded together to form RUNUP.

The form for this team has looked quite bad, however, as they dropped series to both FORZE and FlipSid3 in the Minor closed qualifier and also lost a series to DreamEaters in an online cup. This makes them probably the weakest team at the event, and pretty unlikely they’ll win any games. Either way, the main players to pay attention to from this team will be NickelBack, who found relative success in both EPG and Spirit Academy in the past, and YEKINDAR, who has averaged an interesting 1.17 rating in 2018.