posted by Sun_Tzu,

RaidCall EMS One is headed to Katowice, Poland, in order to settle who will be the champion of the first ever season of this new competition. The event will take place at the Angelo Hotel this weekend, from the 20th to 21st of April. The first game of the event will be played between dd.Dota and RoX.KiS, starting at 11:00 CEST on Saturday the 20th. The total prizepool up for grabs will be $35,000, with $12,000 going to the winner of the event.

Image links to Coverage page for EMS One along with the complete standings

Team news and passport troubles

Virtus.Pro to be replaced by Rat in the Dark

Virtus.Pro have had to drop out of the competition after they reportedly ran into passport issues, as

Ilya 'Airman' Pevcaev has lost his passport. As a result, the team will not be participating at the EMS One finals. The normal procedure would be to extend the offer to the third finisher in the group, however as the third team was

Team Empire, they will not be making the trip for various reasons.

Instead, the invite has been extended to

TCM-Gaming as well as

Kaipi and

Rat in the Dark. These teams were chosen as each placed third in their respective groups. Rats are unlikely to make it due to their nature as more of a groups of friends, but both TCM and Kaipi have expressed interest, with Kaipi likely to have to attend without

Jacky 'EternalEnVy' Mao, instead possibly using their normal ringer of

Alex 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescu. If both Kaipi and TCM end up accepting the invite, the final spot will be decided by playing a final qualifier game between the two teams later today. We will update you on the eight team within the next 24 hours.

Update

It seems Kaipi might not be able to make it due to

Pittner 'bone7' Armand also having trouble finding his ID Card.

Update 2

TCM and Rat in the Dark have been confirmed to play for the eight spot in a deciding best-of-three match tomorrow, preliminary time for the game set to April 17th at 16:30 CEST.

Update 3

The results of the qualifying game are in, and Rat in the Dark are victorious with a 2-1 score. Congratulations to them. This means the spacetime continuum is at peril, as there will be multiple Finns in attendance at EMS One. It's almost like the Finns have a fairly large Dota 2 community.

Mousesports able to attend with full roster

While

Mousesports have had their solo mid player and Captain

Adrian 'Fata' Trinks on the sidelines for a while due to a wrist injury, he will receive a lighter cast today, which may allow him to resume playing Dota 2. He will determine whether he is in shape to join his team at EMS One through-out the day. If Fata is not able to play, he will be replaced by

Tim 'XoYnOzNu' Johansson.

Statement by Mouz Dota 2 co-ordinator

Florian 'PaisY' Schmedes regarding the situation:

The timing for Adrian's accident could not have been any worse, hence we are in the middle of our preparation for the upcoming EMS One Finals in Katowice, Poland as well as the G1-League Qualifier. Adrian received a new cast for his wrist today, which lets him make use of his left hand fingers. He will continue to scrim with the team today and by tonight we will know if he'll be able to compete or if we are forced to use a standin. We all hope the best for Adrian!

Update

Manager Paisy has tweeted out that Fata will be able to play, meaning Mouz will attend with their full five players. Mouz will face

The Alliance in the first round.

dd.Dota without BABARRR

Rani "BABARRR" AL Hajj failed to acquire his visa in time, and according to a statement by

dd.Dota today, they will be playing with

Nicolae 'ComeWithMe' Alexandru Craciunescu in his place.

Favourites for the event

There is little doubt that the two favourite teams going into the event will be

The Alliance as well as

Fnatic.EU, who are likely to meet each other in the semi-finals of the single elimination bracket. Both of these teams will however face hard resistance straight off the bat as Alliance will take on Mouz while Fnatic face up against old LAN foxes

Na`Vi in their first games.

Coming up from the other bracket, with recent strong showings online including defeating Empire in Bigpoint Battle April, RoX.KiS are a definitive wildcard for the event. Also a team to look out for will be

Absolute Legends, the Danish giant who have taken their time to adapt to their new roster, but are showing some signs that they may be prepared to fulfill the promise of their star-studded roster. End of the day, the upper branch of the bracket can go any which way, especially without VP in contention.

RaidCall EMS One Spring Season Finals Bracket

The Future of EMS One

ESL's

Michał 'Carmac' Blicharz has also written a blog post about the lessons learned and the reasonings behind some of the decisions made regarding EMS One and Dota 2. While we encourage you to read the whole blog here, this part in particular may be interesting for Dota 2 fans regarding the upcoming seasons:

This is the first season of EMS One. It is an innovative season structure and system (at least for us) and we are not done tweaking it. We needed a starting point.

Please don’t forget that part of the reason the bracket isn’t the best was because two top teams messed up and finished second, thus changing the seeding.

For sure two teams from the same group will not be able to meet each other in the playoffs until the finals. Maybe we will add another group phase. Maybe the existing group phase before the playoffs will be best of 3. It remains to be seen. Be patient with us. We will make improvements for the second season based on the learnings of the first.

Casters and host

Update

Hosting duties for the event will be handeled by

Soe Gschwind-Penski, whom many will recognize for her previous work with Freaks 4U Gaming GmbH, the parent company of joinDOTA. She is an accomplished hostess of e-Sports events and will surely help give the LAN Finals a professional feel.

In addition to Soe, also in attendance will be

'Pyrion Flax', the well known Dota 2 youtube personality who rather resembles Dark Seer in real life, except less purple. Pyrion will bring his own brand of hilarious hilarity to the event and will surely be a hit, as he was during DotaTalk UK Cup.

Picture of the layout plan for the venue.

English casting will be provided by

Toby 'TobiWan' Dawson, who will be joined by

Jarrett 'Kawa' Robinson. In addition, the intent is to have pro players at the event come on to help out with the cast of some games as their schedules allow.

We can also inform you that

Vitalii 'v1lat' Volochai will be in attendance and the organizers have assured us they will try to provide him with a place to cast from, so that he can bring you Russian language coverage live from the event.

Since the event will be held in Poland, there will also be official Polish coverage provided by

Tomek 'bandiT' Borys,

Arnold 'hitt' Leszczuk,

Paweł 'Raven' Sobczyński and

Łukasz 'Mind' Górny.

Pubstomps abound in Germany

Pubstomps are being organized in various German cities for the EMS One LAN Finals, allowing German Dota 2 fans to come together and watch the games over a pint even if they are not traveling to Poland.

The cities hosting pubstomps in Germany are:
Aachen: https://www.facebook.com/events/1196793450460402/
Berlin: https://www.facebook.com/BerlinMeltdown/
Cologne / Köln: http://barcraft-koeln.de/en/nachster-halt-dota-2/
Leipzig: https://www.facebook.com/events/265853323552321/

If anyone else is organizing pubstomps in other countries for the EMS One finals, please let us know either by forum PM or in the comments and we'll add your event to the list.

Prizepool

1st - $12,000
2nd - $7,000
3rd-4th - $4,000
5th-8th - $2,000

LAN Final teams

Mousesports

Adrian 'Fata' Trinks

Dominik 'Black^' Reitmeier

Pascal 'paS' Lohmeier

Alexander 'Alex' Reinhardt

Max 'Qojqva' BroeckerNatus Vincere

Clement 'Puppey' Ivanov

Alexander 'XBOCT' Dashkevich

Danil 'Dendi' Ishutin

Gleb 'Funn1k' Lipatnikov

Kuro S. 'KuroKy' Takhasomidd.Dota

Sebastien 'Ceb' Debs

Titouan 'Sockshka' Merloz

Thibault 'Funzii' Calonne

Daniel 'blr' RovardiStand-in:

Alex. 'ComeWithMe' Craciunescurox.KIS

Stanislav 'BzzIsPerfect' Glushan

Gleb 'hardEEv' Ushenko

Vladimir 'Yol' Basov

Andrey 'Dread' Golubev

Aleksey 'Solo' BerezinFnatic

Tal 'Fly' Aizik

Adrian 'Era' Kryeziu

Johan 'BigDaddyN0tail' Sundstein

Kalle Juhanpoika 'Trixi' Saarinen

Kai 'H4nn1' HanbueckersAbsolute Legends

Brian 'MaNia' Strandby

Mikkel 'miGGel' Berg

Jesper 'Miracle' Nyhlén

Jonathan 'unicorn' Arge

Christoffer 'Ryze' WintherThe Alliance

Jonathan 'Loda' Berg

Gustav 's4' Magnusson

Henrik 'AdmiralBulldog' Ahnberg

Joakim 'Akke' Akterhall

Jerry 'EGM' LundkvistRat in the Dark

Riku 'Buugi' Fält

Eetu 'Lapiz' Seppälä

Olli 'Sifla' Vidberg

Ari 'Spin' Raimi

Antti 'itake' Mäkinen

EMS One LAN Finals info package [Updated]