Another CS:GO LAN tournament kicks off on June 15. Eight of the strongest teams will battle for the right to be named tournament champion of the BLAST series. The tournament will be held in Lisbon at the Altice Arena and will last five days. In this article, we will give you the format of the tournament and the main news about the contenders.
Tournament format
The teams will begin their journey from the group stage. Two groups of four teams will play in a double-elimination BO3 bracket. The team taking first place in the group automatically qualifies for the semifinals. The 2nd and 3rd place teams will advance to the quarterfinals. Teams that finish in last place leave the tournament.
Playoffs use using the single-elimination system. The best teams in the quarterfinals qualify for the semifinals to face the group winners. Teams that are victorious in the semifinals will play in the grand final. The third place will be divided between the semifinal losers.
Prize money
The tournament offers cash prizes along with leaderboard points from BLAST. The tournament prize pool is $425,000 and 10,000 rating points. At the end of the tournament, the prize pool will be distributed as follows:
- The winner will receive $200,000 and 4,000 BLAST rating points, as well as a slot in the BLAST Premier: World Final 2022;
- For 2nd place, the team will receive $85,000 and 2,000 points
- For 3rd-4th place, teams will receive $40,000 and 1,250 points
- For 5th-6th place, teams will receive $20,000 and 500 points
- For 7th-8th place, teams will receive $10,000 and 250 points
Tournament participants
Team Vitality, OG, FaZe Clan, G2, Natus Vincere, BIG, ENCE, and paiN Gaming will participate in the Lan Event in Lisbon. All teams are in the top 15 of the BLAST rankings, indicating a high level of play at the tournament. All teams except OG are currently in the top 30 of the HLTV rankings.
Group A
In Group A, FaZe Clan, G2, Vitality, and paiN Gaming will fight for the right to reach the semi-finals ahead of time. In the first round, we will witness the fights of FaZe Clan vs paiN Gaming and G2 vs Vitality.
The team FaZe Clan is considered to be the favorite of the group. The team won the last major from PGL in Antwerp, with a crucial victory over Natus Vincere in the final. In the last six months the team achieved good results at the tournaments BLAST Premier: Spring Groups 2022, IEM Katowice 2022, ESL Pro League Season 15 and they approach the next tournament in a great shape. In the first match of the group they will be opposed by the team from Brazil, with no world-class achievements in their resume.
The paiN Gaming team can only boast of making it to this tournament. In the BLAST Premier: Spring Finals qualifiers the team managed to get convincing victories over the top teams of their region. In recent tournaments inside the U.S. arena the team hasn't had consistent success, occasionally losing to teams from the tier-2 scene. For the Brazilian squad this event will be an exciting opportunity to test their mettle against some of the strongest teams from around the world.
The battle between G2 and Vitality looks more complex. Both squads have a lot of experience in the tier-1 scene, but can't boast impressive results in the recent past. The teams played their last head-to-head game in Dallas, and NiKo's team took the win.
In this matchup, a lot will depend on ZywOO's play. The Frenchman is by far the best player in CS.GO according to hltv.org with a kill/death ratio of 1.33, an impressive percentage of headshots (41%) and an average of 88 hitpoints per round on the map. And if G2 doesn't come up with a plan to contain the opposing team's star, he can well come up with another impressive performance.
Group B
In Group B we will see Natus Vincere, BIG, ENCE and OG. On the first day we will enjoy the confrontations between Natus Vincere and OG, as well as between BIG and ENCE. Except for BIG and ENCE, the teams had to resort to making substitutions before the tournament. An academy player sdy will debut for NaVi, while another academy player k1to will replace Krimbo for BIG. A former Team Spirit player degster will become a replacement for OG.
ENCE also gained good form and took 3rd and 2nd place in the last tournaments in Antwerp and Dallas, respectively. However, the team suffered a crushing defeat in the Grand Final of the last tournament against Cloud9, and the team will try to rehabilitate for the last failure by participating in the LAN-event from BLAST. The presence of substitutions in the lineups of Group B teams will be a slight advantage for the Finnish team.
Their German rivals can only boast of a good performance at IEM Dallas 2022, where they managed to go undefeated in the group, becoming the cryptonite for the Brazilian squads. In the playoffs, however, they failed to advance beyond the semifinals. In the majors, BIG experienced problems against the top teams and couldn't get past the Legends stage. Therefore, they will have a hard time in their first match.
All the attention of the CS-community is now riveted to the team Natus Vincere. "Born to Win" had to say goodbye to the long-time captain Boombl4. He will be replaced by sdy, who had no experience on the tier-1 scene before. However, the newcomer expressed his desire to demonstrate a good level of play and prove that he was invited as a substitute for a reason:
This is what I've dreamed of all my life - to play tier-1 Counter-Strike, to be in the NAVI. [As I tweeted,] this is a big opportunity for me. Gotta take advantage of it to prove that this is my level and I have the right to play here.
The Ukrainian team will have to build the team chemistry from scratch, and even s1mple may not help the team in the upcoming event. For all his terrific stats (kill/death ratio of 1.25, 41% headshots, and 86 damage per round) it's extremely difficult to solve the problem of kills and redistribution of duties in the game overnight.
However, their opponent OG is also still at the stage of finding their game. The team will play with a renewed lineup with newcomers NEOGRAF and F1KU. The composition of OG changes more often than the team participates in tournaments. They can be called the underdogs of the group, as it's hard to expect success from them. The team still has a way to go, but the changes in NaVi can play into the hands of the European top five.
