Americas Minor preview

The Americas Minor is about to start, so we take a look at the eight teams in attendance and weigh their chances of reaching the Major.

Running from Wednesday through Sunday, the Americas Minor will feature the top six teams of the North American closed qualifier and the two best teams from the South American qualifier. Due to roster issues, Lazarus had to forfeit their spot at the event, with Luminosity coming in their stead.

The tournament will begin with a double-elimination group stage, featuring a best-of-three format after the initial round of matches. The top two sides from both groups will progress to the double-elimination playoffs, in which all matches will be played in a best-of-three format. You can find the complete schedule for the tournament by checking our viewer's guide.

Both finalists will earn entry into the StarLadder Major's New Challengers stage, while the third-placed team will fight for survival in the Minor Play-In against the teams from the other Minors that finished in the same place, with three spots in the $1 million competition on the line.

Below you can find how the teams have been split into the groups:

Group A

NRG enter the Americas Minor as heavy favorites to win the entire tournament after solidifying their status as a top 10 team, even after making such a drastic change like switching in-game leaders.

The team's first appearance with Peter "stanislaw" Jarguz was a success as a 5-6th place finish in Cologne saw them secure wins over FURIA and FaZe, while losses to the eventual champions from Liquid and French finalists Vitality gave the roster some material to work with as they looked to improve. FaZe claimed revenge against NRG this past weekend at BLAST Pro Series Los Angeles, defeating the team in a BO1 and crushing them on Train and Nuke in the playoffs.

Although their result in Los Angeles may not have been quite what they wanted, the calibre of opposition that NRG have been playing against should have prepared them as they head into the Minor. The North Americans will take on TeamOne in their opening matchup, with a successful BO1 win pitting the team against Singularity or Sharks in the winners' match.

NRG's true competition will come in the playoffs, where the likes of FURIA and eUnited likely await. Nothing short of a spot in the New Challengers Stage will be a satisfactory result for the squad as they look to continue improving upon their results with their new in-game leader, with their CT sides needing the most adjustments as the Major looms.

Singularity are the least favoured of the three American teams in attendance, with NRG likely to top their group and eUnited boasting a better record - albeit online - against teams of similar calibre. Should Singularity manage to advance past the group stages, potential matchups against FURIA and eUnited from Group B should prove to be interesting as this iteration of the team have yet to defeat either opponent in series play.

While Singularity's online results have been solid, the team have yet to be truly tested on LAN, with their only offline appearances seeing them bomb out of Copenhagen Games and manage a 5-6th place finish at ESEA Season 31 Global Challenge. In-game leader Alan "Shakezullah" Hardeman will have to prove his prowess against the likes of stanislaw and Andrei "arT" Piovezan if he hopes to secure a spot at the StarLadder Major, but given the scale of the task ahead, they should be aiming for a spot in the Play-In stage.

Sharks enter the Americas Minor following an extended bootcamp in Europe, allowing the team to compete in a variety of online events including LOOT.BET Season 3, GameAgents League Season 3, UCC Summer Smash, and the LOOT.BET Smack My Beach Cup in the past two months.

Visits to Brazil saw Sharks return to play in the South America closed qualifier for the Minor, in which wins over Reapers, INTZ, and Isurus earned them a spot in Berlin this week. The team also attended DreamHack Open Rio towards the end of April, defeating Redemption POA and the CR4ZY roster to secure a playoff berth before falling to their countrymen from FURIA in the semi-finals.

Renato "nak" Nakano and company will look to put their time practicing in Europe to use as their opening bout will see them face off against Singularity, with a domestic matchup against TeamOne on the cards should they fall to the lower bracket. With their last roster change dating back to March 2018, they are one of the most stable teams competing at the top, and this tournament will be a measuring stick for the Brazilians, who will be eager to prove that they have not yet reached their peak with this lineup.

Since the addition of 17-year-old Bruno "b4rtiN" Câmara, TeamOne have yet to make a LAN appearance. They last played in the IEM Katowice Americas Minor, where losses to Envy led to their elimination and likely the departure of Nicolas "NikoM" Miozzi just one month later. Since then, the team has largely competed in the online portion of ESEA NA MDL Season 31 and various online qualifiers, often missing out on qualifications and closed qualifier appearances following eliminations in the latter stages.

The online MDL season and many of the online qualifiers that were played saw TeamOne go up against FURIA and Singularity, with Bruno "bit" Lima's side having yet to best their countrymen in series play and fallen in their only matchup against the current Singularity roster. A rematch against either team could be on the cards, but TeamOne's rustiness on LAN could haunt them and lead to a swift elimination.

Group B

There has been a lot of hype around FURIA’s roster in 2019 thanks to their underdog runs at both the ECS Season 7 Finals and DreamHack Masters Dallas. The team also currently boasts the best up-and-coming players that Brazil has to offer in Kaike "KSCERATO" Cerato and Yuri "yuurih" Santos, as well as the brilliant mind of in-game-leader arT. Last weekend, FURIA were handed a timely boost as they won the ESEA MDL NA FInals, securing a spot in the next season of the ESL Pro League, and the Global Challenge while fielding coach Nicholas "guerri" Nogueira as a stand-in for Rinaldo "ableJ" Moda Junior.

FURIA, who started out the year with a successful qualification campaign for the IEM Katowice Major, now find themselves ranked as a top ten team in the world and more than prepared for the competition they will be facing at the Americas Minor this week. They’ve gained a plethora of knowledge and experience by playing against some of the best teams in the world and will be looking to continue their recent streak of success in Berlin as one of the heavy favorites to make it to the Major.

eUnited have made offline appearances at IEM Sydney, DreamHack Open Rio, and ESL Pro League since adding Victor "food" Wong, Edgar "MarKE" Maldonado, and Anthony "vanity" Malaspina to their starting lineup. In EPL, they managed to go through the first Americas group stage before finishing behind Cloud9 and Ghost in the second stage, in which they had to make do without Kaleb "moose" Jayne due to visa issues. The improvements were clear when compared to the results in Sydney and Rio de Janeiro, but there was still a lot of work that needed to be done behind the scenes in order for them to create an organized, well-rounded gameplan.

Since their appearances in Australia and Brazil, vanity and co. have been focused on online qualifiers, and their hard work paid off as they managed to secure themselves spots at the Minor and at ESL New York. Just like on the first roster of eUnited he was a part of, moose has played a large role in the team's success and is yet again being used as their main source of firepower. The newer members of the roster may not be carrying every game, but they are giving the Canadian player some much-needed backup that he tended to lack with the previous lineup.

Coming into the Americas Minor, eUnited will be looking to prove that they can bring the same confidence they’ve shown online to an offline setting. They are the only North American team making an appearance in Group B but have plenty of experience against their Brazilian rivals. The Americas Minor is the perfect place for eUnited to put their hard work to the test, and they are definitely a team to keep an eye on in Berlin.

Since losing João "felps" Vasconcellos to MIBR and benching João "horvy" Horvath in January, it has been a slow year for the Brazilian team, who have fallen short at almost every single qualifier they have attended. So far their greatest achievements have been a 5th-6th finish at DreamHack Open Rio and securing a spot at the upcoming Americas Minor. The two players they brought in to fill their roster, Gustavo "yeL" Knittel and Lucas "destiny" Bullo, have done little to improve the overall performance of INTZ, who have been outside the top 30 since March.

After an overall disappointing performance in Rio, INTZ turn to the Minor as they look to redeem themselves. Marcelo "chelo" Cespedes in particular will be desperate to prove his worth after spending several months away from the team and having to play with a high latency out of Brazil. With the majority of the competition being names they are very familiar going up against, INTZ could easily turn out to be one of the big surprises of this event, especially if star player Vito "kNgV-" Giuseppe starts putting in dominant performances.

The Brazilian team comes into the Americas Minor with no official matches with their newest addition, felps, who was brought in on loan from MIBR. That being said, this isn't the first time that four of the five members of Luminosity have been on the same roster. Back in 2016, felps, Ricardo "boltz" Prass, Henrique "HEN1" Teles, and Lucas "steel" Lopes all played under the Immortals tag for a little under a month and managed to win an IBUYPOWER Masters. The players may all be familiar with each other, but the first half of 2019 has been pretty grim for the Luminosity core, and the addition of felps may just be the boost they need to get things rolling in the right direction.

Prior to felps joining, Luminosity’s only recent offline action in 2019 had been during ESL Pro League Season 9. Qualifying for the finals was easy for boltz and co, but once they made it to France they were unable to win a single map. Since then, the team has been absent from any qualifiers or events, and if it wasn't for Lazarus dropping out of the Minor, they would have probably continued to be off the grid until after the player break.

As for their newest addition, felps, his time with MIBR reaped little reward for either party and he was unable to mold with his former teammates from SK. However, he is no stranger to competing against the lower levels of Counter-Strike, and it wouldn't be surprising to see him put in very similar numbers to those he did on INTZ. In theory, felps represents an upgrade over Lucas "LUCAS1" Teles in terms of the roles in Luminosity, but for this team to reach the Major over NRG and FURIA it will require a level of Counter-Strike we have not seen from the team this year.