Summoners!
The North American Regionals at PAX Prime in Seattle kicks off today at 11am PDT. 8 teams will enter, but only 3 can advance to the World Championship in Los Angeles. Along with earning a chance at claiming THE League of Legends Season 2 title, teams will be competing for a $150,000 prize pool and a guaranteed position as professional, salaried eSports athletes in the Season 3 Championship Series.
In case you haven’t been keeping up, here is the list of teams competing as well as their current standings since MLG last week:
1. Team SoloMid (1875)
2. Counter-Logic Gaming Prime (1150)
3. Dignitas (860)
4. Curse Gaming (515)
5. TSM.EVO (400)
6. Team Dynamic (375)
7. Team Legion (215)
8. MME Ferus (175)
And as for the actual tournament matchups -
Coming off of the unfortunate events of the MLG Summer Championship, you have to believe Team Curse is out to make a statement. Often lauded as the best individual players in the game, the team has yet to win a major tournament, and a victory at PAX would surely be the morale boost necessary to launch them into the finals. When Saintvicious, Elementz, Nyjacky, Westrice, and Cop are collectively on their game they are nearly unstoppable. The pressure may be on the combined efforts of Nhat Nguyen and DontMashMe to springboard their lane and carry TSM.Evo to victory, but if any combination can pull it off it’s definitely that one.
Failing to take the tournament last week, Dignitas faces newcomers Team Dynamic in their first game today. With NintendudeX back as their jungler (after a brief stint with Atlanta following some controversial comments) TD is once again playing their extremely aggressive style and are poised to move on to the Championship. This could spell trouble for Dignitas, as the team has had difficulties with TD in the past. Finishing 3rd at MLG last week, TD had defeated Dynamic 2-0 in one of their earlier matches. However, Dignitas has been training extensively with Korean teams and has a few tricks up their sleeve not yet seen which they assure us all gives them quite the advantage.
After a disappointing showing last week, Team Legion is looking to bounce back and rally today. That may be difficult considering they’ll be up against #2 seed Counter-Logic Gaming. CLG has been pretty quiet recently, focusing their efforts on regionals and forgoing recent events. But anyone who has witnessed a CLG game knows there’s no joking around with them; HotShotGG, Voyboy, Chauster, Bigfatlp, and Doublelift are all at the top of their game and can each snowball a match into their favor. It’ll be on Legion to show what they’re made of and prove they deserve to be at the Championship in Los Angeles.
And finally, Team MME Ferus (formerly mTw.NA) has a tough road ahead of them. Besting Orbit Gaming last week to seal the 8th spot at PAX, they’ll have to start the tournament against #1 ranked Team SoloMid. The Bay Life bosses have been training extensively for this weekend, forgoing MLG last week in order to better concentrate on their task in Seattle. While history would favor TSM to sweep the tournament altogether, there may be some silver lining of hope for MME; As was made public at the Summer Championship, Orbit Gaming had been scrimmaging extensively with TSM every day for the past weeks. If any of those strategies of game styles seeped through to Orbit, then perhaps MME can anticipate what’s to come from TSM.
So, who will take the PAX Regionals? Be sure to tune in and catch all the action starting at 11am here.
