IEM Katowice preview: Current Legends

IEM Katowice's New Legends Stage is set to kick off on Wednesday, with the eight qualified sides joining the eight teams who made the playoffs at the FACEIT Major. Here is our preview of the current Legends.

The first stage of the IEM Katowice Major is over, and that means the eight teams who became the New Challengers return to compete against a new set of teams in the second stage, the eight Legends, who made it to the playoffs at the FACEIT Major last September.

After we analyzed the Returning Challengers and the Minor Challengers last week, we now take a look at the eight new teams who have just arrived in Katowice following an extra week's worth of preparation: Astralis, Liquid, Natus Vincere, FaZe, MIBR, BIG, HellRaisers, and Complexity.

Eight spots in the playoffs, held at the Spodek Arena, will be up for grabs in the next stage, which will be played in the same format as the New Challengers Stage. You can learn more about that in our viewer's guide, where you'll also find the schedule for the upcoming five days, the player-selected seeding ahead of the first round, and more.

Astralis are an organization that has attended every Major since the former TSM squad, featuring the long-standing core of Andreas "⁠Xyp9x⁠" Højsleth, Nicolai "⁠device⁠" Reedtz, and Peter "⁠dupreeh⁠" Rasmussen, created the brand at the beginning of 2016. Before their time under the now RFRSH-owned organization, the trio had always made it to the playoffs at Majors and often reached as far as the semi-finals, but it wasn't until early 2017 that they grabbed their first title, shortly after the addition of Lukas "⁠gla1ve⁠" Rossander, at the ELEAGUE Major.

A year later at the same event, the core lost their streak of playoffs finishes at Majors, but Astralis were back to the highest step of the podium at the FACEIT Major eight months later, with Emil "⁠Magisk⁠" Reif hoisting his first trophy from such a tournament in only his third Major attendance.

The Danes only continued their dominance on the scene after the London event, securing five more titles before 2018 came to a close to finish the year with a total of 10 victories as by far the most successful side, making a strong case for the lineup ranking among the greatest of all time.

That lineup has not changed and they remain ranked first both in the eyes of our ranking as well as in the teams' seeding, which makes them the obvious favorites for not only this upcoming stage but also the entire Major. They have already been challenged once this year by the refreshed Liquid roster at iBUYPOWER Masters, where the Danes conceded a series to the North American side for the first time, but it appears unlikely the two will meet before the playoffs, as the seeding system won't allow it unless big upsets happen.

All in all, this Swiss stage should be a walk in the park for Astralis, who have nearly a year-long history of top-four finishes at Big Events. They almost never crumble under pressure or in heavily favored matchups, of which they are certain to face at least two given their top seed, and they have already played a tournament this year after the break, which should remove the rustiness factor that could affect some of the other Legends

The North American organization have been through it all at the Majors over the past four years, from bombing out at the qualifier and placing last at a Major itself to being a legitimate contender in 2016, when they featured Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and reached their only grand final thus far far. Two players have remained from their first appearance in Cluj-Napoca, Nick "⁠nitr0⁠" Cannella and Jonathan "⁠EliGE⁠" Jablonowski, the most experienced in the current lineup, which now also features a Major winner in Jake "⁠Stewie2K⁠" Yip.

Their latest addition did not come until long after the FACEIT Major, where Liquid made the semi-finals in what many thought would be their best shot at a title, but Astralis stood in their way once again, just as they did for the majority of the year. nitr0's squad went on to lose a couple of more tournaments to the best team in the world and, before the year came to a close, Epitacio "⁠TACO⁠" de Melo and Wilton "⁠zews⁠" Prado were transferred to MIBR in a trade for Stewie2K, while Eric "⁠adreN⁠" Hoag became the team's new coach.

So far , the lineup has exceeded expectations, with their very first showing at iBUYPOWER Masters ending with the first series victory against Astralis in the grand final of the American tournament, despite a rather short amount of time spent preparing ahead of the event. Some changes to positions and to their approach to the AWP role – which is now occupied by no one, apparently – did not slow them down, and it's likely they have only improved with another month's worth of practice behind them.

The iBUYPOWER win builds up a great storyline heading into the top-16 stage of the Major, where both Liquid and Astralis are set to play, but, as mentioned above, we will probably have to wait until next week to see it unfold because of the seeding. For the time being, we will have to make do with Keith "⁠NAF⁠" Markovic & co. looking set to make it through without significant issues and joining their big rivals in that category.

As a legendary organization that has been at the top for close to five years now, Na`Vi has played at every single Major and made it far in most cases, with the exception of last-place bowouts at the first two and another group stage exit more recently in Krakow.

Despite reaching the grand final on three of those occasions (DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca, MLG Columbus, and FACEIT Major), Natus Vincere have yet to walk the runway to the most prestigious trophy in CS:GO. Only Danylo "⁠Zeus⁠" Teslenko is a Major winner out of the current lineup, from his time in late 2016 to mid-2017 with Gambit, who surprised everyone in Poland a year and a half ago.

With victories at BLAST Pro Series Copenhagen and runners-up finishes at EPICENTER and BLAST Pro Series Lisbon in the few months after the previous Major, results have still largely been positive aside from a quick elimination from IEM Chicago, but Na`Vi were still surpassed by Liquid towards the end of 2018 as the second-best team in the world.

Their peers have put them in third place on average as well, but it is still hard to say what kind of Na`Vi we will see at IEM Katowice. Zeus' interview with us at GG.BET ICE Challenge, where the team lost to Heroic and North, and particularly his opening answer to what expectations the team is heading into the Major with speak for itself:

"As of late, we haven't been playing particularly well, perhaps because we had an extended break, where we practised exclusively online. Maybe that's one of the reasons. It feels like we're treating the Major like just another event, there's no massive eagerness and, as such, I can't tell people to await some sort of an amazing result from us. Considering the current situation, securing top eight at the Major would be a decent result. I can't say that we've done more than others to be #1. What happens, happens, so let's see what comes, but we need to sort out our relationship issues. If we don't resolve this, then #1 is out of the conversation."

Unless that is some sort of elaborate ruse, that should be enough to tell you that Natus Vincere will not be at a 100% in Katowice, but the question is how far off they will be and whether it'll be enough to still go far — after all, if s1mple and Denis "⁠electroNic⁠" Sharipov turn up in great form, the individuals alone could push them through to the playoffs, but don't be too surprised if Na`Vi look dejected from the get-go.

FaZe only appeared in CS:GO in late 2015 with the squad that transferred over from G2, with Håvard "⁠rain⁠" Nygaard being the sole player who has remained a part of the organization for the entire time. The core of the present lineup didn't form around him until over a year later after the previous version had struggled to make their mark at the top of the scene, with two group stage exits in a row at MLG Columbus and ESL One Cologne.

After Finn "⁠karrigan⁠" Andersen and Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač as well as Ladislav "⁠GuardiaN⁠" Kovács and Olof "⁠olofmeister⁠" Kajbjer — some of the game's most accomplished and Major-experienced names — arrived, FaZe finally became a world-beating team, but they couldn't turn that into a Major title at the beginning of 2018, as Cloud9's heroic run saw the North American side surpass the Europeans in a tightly-contested grand final.

Throughout 2018, they faced roster issues, with olofmeister taking an extended break in the first half of the year, and could never reclaim their spot at the top despite winning a tournament here and there. Even the Swede's return wasn't enough for FaZe to return to their former glory, as they placed 5th-8th at the FACEIT Major, where NiKo took over in-game leadership, which eventually resulted in karrigan's departure from the squad at the end of the year following an up-and-down period.

For the beginning of 2019, the team decided to bring in veteran Dauren "⁠AdreN⁠" Kystaubayev, but the new lineup's first showing with the Kazakhstani player went poorly, as they lost twice to Ghost at iBUYPOWER Masters. Only a week later, however, they turned things around with a win at ELEAGUE Invitational, where they faced Cloud9, Complexity, and BIG. Those are some of the teams they will go up against at IEM Katowice, but hardly the best of them, making expectations for the NiKo-led roster quite difficult to determine.

As a brand new organization formed last year under Immortals' ownership, MIBR have only attended one Major, where their Brazilian-American roster placed top-four to qualify for IEM Katowice directly. However, when it comes to the individual players, the core packs loads of experience from their time with Luminosity and SK, with whom four of the current five won two Majors in a row in 2016. Meanwhile, for João "⁠felps⁠" Vasconcellos, IEM Katowice will only be his third Major after PGL Major Krakow and the ELEAGUE Major, which he attended with this exact same roster.

A lot has changed in the MIBR camp since the London Major. After some unsatisfying results, they discontinued their experiment with the American duo of Stewie2K and Tarik "⁠tarik⁠" Celik to return to a fully Brazilian squad, reuniting with TACO and felps to recreate the aforementioned SK team that played together for the majority of 2017. On top of that, they have welcomed back zews, who had coached the squad in their earlier days.

Given that this team has yet to play an official match since its recreation at the end of 2018, we can only speculate as to how good they will be at IEM Katowice. It's hard to imagine that this constellation of players would fail completely, as they managed to make it work last time despite dealing with role issues due to packing a bit too much aggression in Fernando "⁠fer⁠" Alvarenga and felps, but we simply can't know what kind of form the individuals are in or how strong their map pool is — at best we can assume they will continue to stay away from Nuke.

All of that makes MIBR an exciting team to watch come Wednesday. We will start seeing some signs of their strengths and weaknesses and whether they have changed their system again from the last time we saw the core of the squad in action, at the ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals.

Although a little over a year older than MIBR, BIG are still quite fresh to the Major scene with their first appearance at PGL Major Krakow in 2017, where they first secured a Legends spot. Most of their players' Major history goes beyond that, however, with Johannes "⁠nex⁠" Maget at the top with nine Majors attended (every one since DreamHack Winter 2014 excluding ELEAGUE Major 2017), while, on the other hand, Ismailcan "⁠XANTARES⁠" Dörtkardeş only has last year's ELEAGUE Major in his ledger.

After reclaiming Legends status in London last year, BIG could not improve on that showing at the events that followed, with their best showings coming at the rather small tournaments cs_summit3 and SuperNova CS:GO Malta, finishing in third place in both cases. On top of that, at the end of 2018, it came to light that nex would have to take an extended break to treat his wrist injury, but BIG managed to lock down an exciting replacement in XANTARES.

They prepared for the possibility of nex's return before the Major, as he was listed as the coach in their Major lineup, which gave BIG the option to swap the players once at IEM Katowice. And that is what they will do in the end, as Owen "⁠smooya⁠" Butterfield and the team came to the decision to part ways when they learned that the 26-year-old would be able to recover in time for the Polish event.

BIG are another team we will see in this particular lineup for the very first time on Wednesday, as the last time they played was still with smooya at the ELEAGUE Invitational. The British player's departure will certainly mean changes in positions, as it's likely that Johannes "⁠tabseN⁠" Wodarz will take over those duties full-time after having filled that role in a secondary capacity. These changes, in which the star player takes over the AWP, are often criticized and for good reason, but now with XANTARES in the team, the usual issue with it — the lack of a difference maker on the rifles — could very well be non-existent. The bigger problem could potentially be a lack of form on nex's part following quite a lengthy break from the game, so the focus will certainly be on him at the start of the Major.

Although HellRaisers' story at Majors dates back to EMS One Katowice 2014, the second Major in CS:GO, the organization has only appeared at six of the 13 in total, as they had a long break between 2015 and 2017, when they did not make it to a single one, and also missed out on two of the last three.

The team slowly evolved from a CIS roster to a European one and now they are somewhere in between with two players from both regions (which gave them the possibility to choose between the Minors back in the previous cycle), with Kirill "⁠ANGE1⁠" Karasiow as the only constant and the veteran of the squad otherwise powered by youngsters.

HellRaisers made it to this stage as one of the surprises of the FACEIT Major, where the multinational mixture made the top eight in Özgür "⁠woxic⁠" Eker and Issa "⁠ISSAA⁠" Murad's first appearance at this stage. Since then, they have failed to impress, however, with some disappointing results such as a 9th-11th placing at StarSeries i-League Season 6, which caused the team to replace Vladyslav "⁠bondik⁠" Nechyporchuk with Abay "⁠HObbit⁠" Khassenov.

That change hasn't yielded much fruit so far as they placed fourth at SuperNova CS:GO Malta, did not reach the playoffs at the ESL Pro League Season 8 Finals and finished top-eight at PLG Grand Slam, with their last two eliminations coming at the hands of two different G 2 rosters. That is quite the poor resumé for a team heading into the Major, but let's remember that the latest result happened over two months ago - lots can change in that amount of time.

Complexity are one of only four organizations who took part in the first-ever CS:GO Major, DreamHack Winter 2013, and who will also be in attendance in this stage of the 14th one, with the lineup around Sean "⁠seang@res⁠" Gares and Spencer "⁠Hiko⁠" Martin representing the black-and-red at the time. However, when they lost that team to Cloud9 after EMS One Katowice, the organization disappeared from the Major map and didn't return until the FACEIT Major, where they became Legends once again.

Interestingly, Jordan "⁠n0thing⁠" Gilbert found himself back to his former organization almost five years later as by far the most seasoned player of the roster with nine Majors to his name. Peter "⁠stanislaw⁠" Jarguz has been to three, Shahzeb "⁠ShahZaM⁠" Khan to two, while Rory "⁠dephh⁠" Jackson finally made it in his home country last year and Ricardo "⁠Rickeh⁠" Mulholland returns to CS:GO's biggest tournament for the first time since ESL One Cologne 2015, which he played with Immunity.

That also speaks to how this team has changed since the FACEIT Major, where they were likely the biggest surprise of all with their run all the way to the playoffs. Only the core trio of stanislaw, dephh, and ShahZaM has stayed, as numerous failures to live up to that feat resulted in Bradley "⁠ANDROID⁠" Fodor and Jaccob "⁠yay⁠" Whiteaker getting benched, with Rickeh added as a permanent replacement and n0thing as a stand-in.

The roster has already played its first LANs at iBUYPOWER Masters and ELEAGUE Invitational, and they were quickly eliminated at both events, putting in a couple of close maps against fnatic and FaZe at least. Online losses to Swole Patrol and Luminosity in the IEM Sydney qualifier suggest things have not improved much and have further convinced most that stanislaw's team will be out of their depth at this Major, especially as they've been handed the lowest seed in the New Legends Stage, which puts them up against Astralis in the first round - quite the tall order for the North American roster.