NiP, Alliance or someone else? The EU competition for the Minor is tough

posted by Brasozial,

It's the first time this season that neither Alliance nor the Ninjas in Pyjamas have qualified for the upcoming Major tournament. However, they still have one chance in the Minor qualifier. While at the last Minor only one European got a slot for the event, there'll be two EU slots for the Croatian Dota PIT Minor. At first it was planned to play all games in a single elimination bracket, but complaints by players like Peter 'ppd' Dager or Maurice 'KheZu' Gutmann made the organisers change the system to a double elimination bracket.

The minor qualifiers for China and EU should be double elimination since there are 2 slots to qualify. @ whoever is in charge >.>
— Peter Dager (@Peterpandam) 1. April 2019

Especially Alliance and NiP can be happy about these changes, since both favourites would have already faced each other in the second round of the Upper Bracket. Now they can still make it into the top 2 by winning all matches in the Lower Bracket. However, those two teams are not the only favourites to make it to the Minor in Croatia.

The Final Tribe is aiming for their second Minor participation since DreamLeague Season 10. The same goes for Maurice 'KheZu' Gutmann who found a new stack after Vega Squadron (EU) disbanded.

He's playing alongside Mihai 'canceL' Vasile and Alaan 'Bamboe' Faraj for Kingdra. They'll play against NiP in their first series.

Alliance won't get an easy start either: they'll play against Team Singularity's new squad around Jerry 'EGM' Lundkvist and Yaroslav 'Miposhka' Naidenov.

The European qualifier for the Minor starts on Friday at 4 pm CEST.