posted by Sun_Tzu,
Fnatic.EU and 
mousesports.
Groupstages are behind us
Surprisingly,
iCCup overcame 
Virtus.Pro 2-1 in their first round match for Group A, and were able to add victory over RoX.KiS on top of it to come out of the "CIS Group" in first place. RoX were unable to recover in time, as VP had made their way through the lower bracket after a hard fought game against 
Next.Kz in order to eliminate RoX, going 2-1 in each of their match-up's.Meanwhile Group B got off to a rough start, as
Quantic Gaming had to drop out due to a injury by their offlane player Titouan 'Shockshka' Merloz, to be replaced by uebelst-gamyngG. This made for a fairly easy group for both Fnatic.EU and Kaipi, as Fnatic had started to find their form again by the time this group was played out. As such these two teams ended up meeting in the upper bracket, with Kaipi managing to come out on top 2-1 as they were allowed to play fairly within their comfort zone. Fnatic went on to secure the second place by defeating 
TCM-Gaming in two straight games.In Group C there was a slight surprise, as
Denial e-Sports came in last after coming up against 
Evil Geniuses and then being eliminated by 4Friends+Chrillee. This meant that EG as well as Team Dignitas ended up having a fairly easy time, with the main event being the upper bracket finals, where EG got off to a strong start with a four-protect-one strategy centered around a heavily farmed Anti-Mage, only to have Dignitas come back and take a 22 minute game followed by a slightly longer game where they relied on multiple cores and split pushing to get them the top spot of the group.In the final group it was
mousesports who did what was expected fo them, defeating Keita-Gaming as they were still known at that time in the first round before taking out Team Empire in the upper bracket game. Empire ended up defeating 
Flip.sid3 Tactics twice in order to qualify, as they met them first in their initial match and then had to face them again in order to secure their second place in the group and the final spot in the playoffs.A look at the playoff match-up's
The playoff's will start out with Fnatic going up against mouz in what should be a very close match, with both teams showing solid performances lately. The two teams may get a taste of what's coming up this weekend however as they may end up facing each other in Poland, as they are two of the favourites to get to the finals of RaidCall EMS One. The edge in creativity should likely go to Fnatic right now, while mouz is the more consistent team.
They will in turn face off against the winner of Team Empire and iCCup, as fortune saw it fit to have another CIS showdown in the first round of the playoff's. iCCup should be favoured given their recent solid track-record, but Empire have been showing signs of life and should not be counted out, even as they remain a three man team playing with stand-in's.
The third CIS team, Virtus.Pro, will get to face off against Team Dignitas in their first round match-up. While both teams have been struggling as of late the fact that Dignitas will get nearly a weeks breather in order to figure things out while bootcamping should help them turn their luck around, making them slightly favoured in terms of which team is likely to step up and improve their standard of play in order to take this series.
This leaves Kaipi against Evil Geniuses as the last game which will be played of the first round, a match-up which has in the past favoured Kaipi slightly. If Kaipi can keep on playing what they are comfortable with they are likely to be in a good position to repeat history. It comes down to
Clinton 'Fear' Loomis to deny them that comfort, as well as to keep his own team in check so that no wesbites need to be updated.
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